EEM - External Event Management
EEM - External Event Management is one of the complementary modules of itmSUITE®. The module is aimed to enable interactions between itmSUITE® and third party applications (interfaces). The supported direction of the data flow is from the external application to itmSUITE® (input). It is possible to define and implement outbound data flow and interfaces by using the action engine component of the itmSUITE®.
The module can receive information (inbound messages) with two modes which may be activated at the same time:
Indice
Active channel
In this mode data acquisition is made by means of mails. EEM verifies at regular intervals the existence of mail messages in a configured mailbox and processes them when found.
Passive channel
In this mode, EEM makes available web services in order to pass data.
EEM process steps
EEM works on inbound messages received by means of the active or passive channel through a three steps process:
- EEM processes and validates the incoming message
- MB dispatch the message to a subscriber
- itmSUITE® module throughAction Engineexecute the required task
EEM forwards the received data towards itmSUITE® destination module sending them through themessage buscomponent which works as a dispatcher. The final step of the process is performed in the destination itmSUITE®module
means of the action engine which exectues the the MB manage the message queue and dispatch towards the subscriber (other 'modules ofitmSUITE® as SM/PM, CMS or EEM)
itmSUITE®module received the message and based on the rule configured in Action Engine execute tasks (eg.: Ticket creation, ticket updating , sending notification, ect.)
Outbound notification are managed directly the itmSUITE® modules eg. PM/SM
Inbound Comunication
As mention above, this communication can be managed through:
- Active channel
- Passive channel
The paragraph below shown the main step necessary to configure them.
Active channel
The activity to perform to correctly set up this configuration are:
- Define one or more Active configuration channel
- Implement a validation rule via MSC (Monitoring System Configuration)
Using EEM Menu Active Notification Channels is possible to define the parameter necessary to access, one or more, mailbox.
The image below shown the parameter to insert to configure a mailbox
An MSC (Monitoring System Configuration) is composed by General and Parameter informations.
The image below shown the General tab used by the system to validate the incoming data
The image below shown the Parameter tab used by the system to collect information present on a message.
One message is validated if the Identification Strategy is respected and all the parameters are presents into the body of message
Passive channel
When itmSUITE® is called from third parites system is necessary to define the validation rule using the MSC (monitoring sytem configuration) session.
In this case, a client call is accepted if the Request Identification tag and the expected Parameters are properly passed into the SOAP message.
The image below shown a MSC (monitoring sytem configuration) configuration session.
Action Engine Configuration
When the incoming message is validated by EEM, the informations are sent to MB (Message Bus) that dispatch it to the itmSUITE® Action engine and a configured Action is activated.
Action Engine enabled the user to configured an Action and the activation condition. An action is composed by:
- General Information
- Trigger and Activation condition
- Parameters
- Tasks to execute
the following images shown the action' user interface and provide some more detail about this functionality
Condition'tab enable the user to define a Boolean condition that should be verify before activate the action' . Generally the conditions works on input Parameter.
Tasks tab enable the user to define one or more task that will be executed sequentially if the condition is valid. The system manage different type of task, the most flexible and powerful is Scripting task, based on Javascript framework, enable the user to call itmSUITE® primitive
Outbound Comunication
itmSUITE® module can send information towards third parties software using scripting tasks. This can be performed:
- Sending a preformatted mail
- Calling a third parties web services
