Publish IT Metrics to Mobile Devices › Configure a Connector for CSV Files

Configure a Connector for CSV Files

CA Executive Insight enables you to view your vital company business metrics on mobile devices. These business metrics can come from many different sources including CSV (character delimiter-separated values) files, which store tabular data in plain-text form. CA Executive Insight supports the following delimiters: comma, semicolon, colon, and tab.

CA Executive Insight lets you upload CSV file data into the CA Executive Insight database. This data can be made available on your mobile device.

Follow these steps:

1. Obtain or create one or more CSV files containing data that you want to view using the product.

   CSV files must have a row of timestamps and a column of metric names or vice versa. Optionally, the CSV files can also have a metric path or a unit of measure with each metric name. The units of measure, path, or both must be in separate rows or columns, but their orientation must be the same as the orientation of the metric names.

   Note: The maximum file size recommended is 2 MB for the CSV file. However this is a configurable value and you can update if needed.

   Important! Increasing the file size can cause the server process to run out of memory, depending on the other load the server is processing. There is also the possibility of losing data if the persistence of data is not fast enough. Caution should be exercised before changing this value.

   You can update this property in:

   Windows

   install_dir\config\execConfig.properties
   

   Linux

   install_dir/config/execConfig.properties
   

   install_dir

   Specifies the directory where CA Executive Insight is installed.

   You can update this property by editing value:

   service.dirMonitor.maxCsvFileSize=<desired file size in Megabytes>
   

2. Log in to the Admin UI.
3. Click Metric Connectors under the Admin tab.

   The Metric Connectors page opens.

4. Click Add New, and select CSV Connector from the drop-down list.

   The New Universal CSV File Connector page opens.

5. Fill in the required fields. Mouse over each field for a field description.

   Name

   Defines the name of the connector.

   Limits: Up to 255 characters

   A connector name is used as a folder name for the default location of CA Executive Insight; therefore, usage of special symbols such as ?, %, #, ;, |, <, >, \, / cannot be used in connector name.

   Note: The connector name should be unique.

   Description

   (Optional) Defines a description for the connector.

   Limits: Up to 512 characters

   Folder Location

   The default folder location is:

   <Executive Insight installation directory>/csvUploads/<connector name>
   

   Optionally, you can specify a folder location. To specify a different folder location, you can utilize a folder on a local or a remote machine. The folder should already exist as CA Executive Insight will not create the folder and will display an error message if the folder does not exist.

   Specify the full path to access this folder. Shared folders on remote machines should be read-write share. Read-only share causes an error. If the product is not able to access the folders at a non-default location, an error message is logged in the log file. When the folder becomes accessible/reachable, the product resumes monitoring.

   Delimiter

   Select the delimiter of the CSV file from a drop-down list with four options: comma, semicolon, colon, or tab.

   Default: Comma

   Data Start Row #

   Enter the required row number where the data begins in the CSV file. Supports numbers from 1 onward.

   Data Start Column #

   Enter the required column number where the data begins in the CSV file. Supports letters and numbers similar to the convention used by Excel.

   In the files being used, there should be no non-numeric values after the Data Start Row and Data Start Column values.

   Data Organization

   Select the orientation of the data in the CSV file from a drop-down list.

   • Time is listed by column - indicates that each column represents the data in a single time stamp for each metric in the CSV file.
   • Time is listed by row - indicates that each row represents the data in a single time stamp.

   Time Stamp Row/Column #, Metric Name Row/Column #, Metric Path Row/Column #

   These fields represent which row/column each of those fields can be found.

   Unit of Measure Row/Column #

   It is not a required field. It can be specified in the uploaded file. It will be considered only when a business indicator is created. It is not updated in subsequent uploads when business indicator values are updated or ignored. To update this value for an existing business indicator, see Customize the Basic Business Indicators.

   If this value is no longer supported by CA Executive Insight, it is ignored and a log file message for this action is written.

   Date/Time Format

   Multiple date/time formats are selectable using a drop-down list, but you can also specify any formats unique to your organization. This format cannot contain the selected delimiter.

   Note: In the files being used, there should be no non-numeric values after the Data Start Row and Data Start Column values. All the following values should be metric data.

6. Click Save.

   All properties for a connector can be updated and used for the next file that is processed. The CSV connector is created.

7. Place your CSV file(s) within the default folder or the folder location you specified.

   CA Executive Insight scans the designated folder location every minute and extracts data from all CSV files found in that directory, and creates or updates the appropriate business indicators. Only CSV file types are processed (with '.csv' extension); all other file types/extensions are ignored. For each CSV file, if the extraction is a success, the file is deleted from the source directory. If the extraction fails, a '.bad' extension is appended to the filename and the file remains in the monitored directory. CA Executive Insight outputs any error messages from the file extraction/upload to the log file.

   A business indicator is uniquely identified by metric name and metric path data.

   CA Executive Insight saves data at a per-minute granularity. No more than 1 data value per minute is saved. If there is more than 1 data value for a minute, the 1st value, with respect to time stamp, is saved. All other values are ignored.

   The data is aggregated every hour on the half hour, such as 12:30, 1:30, and so on. No data will be available for timeframes other than 15M (15 minutes) or 1H (1 hour) until aggregation runs. Any data that is older than 1 hour will be displayed after the data has been aggregated. For some files, 2 aggregation cycles may be needed.

   If you upload a new file with data for existing business indicators for timestamps already in the database, updated values are used and aggregation is run again.

Note: All of the metrics that are found in the CSV are automatically business indicators. You do not have to select metrics as with the other types of connectors.

Date/Time Format Considerations

The date and time formats are not case-sensitive. The letter 'm' is context-sensitive based on whether 'h' or 's' is detected. If hour is detected, then next 'm' value will be minutes; or if seconds are detected, directly after the 'm' instances; otherwise, 'm' will indicate months.