Administering Critical Events › Understanding Configuration Manager › Integrating with Unicenter Service Desk › How the Integration with Service Desk Works

How the Integration with Service Desk Works

CA NSM creates Service Desk requests based on policies defined in the Event Management System (EMS), Advanced Event Correlation (AEC), and Alert Management System (AMS). This is how it works:

1. A situation is evaluated by either EMS message records and actions or by AEC rules. If the event is serious, an alert is generated.
2. AMS class or escalation policy determines if a Service Desk request (ticket) is appropriate, and creates one.

Note: AMS creates requests only for Service Desk resources that are active. This helps avoid flooding the Service Desk.

CA NSM comes with EMS, AEC, and AMS policy that can automatically create and close Service Desk requests. You can also write your own policy using message records and actions, correlation rules, and alert classes and escalation policies.

This is how CA NSM interacts with Unicenter Service Desk:

• Alert policy definitions specify that Service Desk requests be opened and closed during the life cycle of an alert:
  • Open a Service Desk request when an alert is created. Indicate this using the Alert Class Window.

    Note: AMS does not open a request if an existing request has identical summary, description, and asset properties. This prevents multiple trouble tickets describing the same root problem.

  • Open a Service Desk request when an alert is escalated. Use the Escalation Policy Editor.
  • Close a request when the alert that opened it is closed or made inactive. Use the context menu in the Unicenter MCC to close an alert; use the Alert Class window Main page or Alert Properties dialog Status page to make an alert inactive.
• Alerts that are associated with Service Desk requests include the request reference number. Likewise, Service Desk requests created by alerts indicate that an outside application opened the request.
• The activity log of a Service Desk request is updated automatically with additional information from AMS when duplicate alerts are created.
• The context menu in the Unicenter MCC lets you interact manually with the Service Desk. You can view requests, open a request, and search the Service Desk Knowledge Tools. For example, when you right-click an alert, you can see requests associated with that alert. When you right-click a managed object in the 2D Map or Topology view, you can see requests for the selected node.

Note: When Service Desk requests are opened and closed, a message is sent to the Event Console.