Managing events and alerts

An event is any significant action or occurrence in the system or in an application detected by a program that requires users to be notified. Managing the events that occur on a client is a key requirement to minimizing downtime of these computers. Event logging starts automatically each time the managed device is started. It permits to visualize the general state of a managed device, the pending alarms and any information regarding the agent installed on this client and the possibility to respond to these events.

In addition to the events BMC Client Management has added the notion of alerts, which are events that the administrator needs to be made aware of immediately. Alerts are a specific type of events, that is, events for which a notification is sent to one or more administrators. The alert displays in the status bar in the form a yellow triangle no matter which node the administrator is currently displaying and the number of new alerts are also displayed on the dashboard.

This section includes:

• Event log model list
• Configuring alert notification

The events logged for the activated event log models can be monitored under the main Alerts and Events node and under a node of the same name under an individual device or device group. To be displayed in the event logs of a device, the events logged locally by the BMC Client Management agent must be uploaded to the master database. For some modules, this is done automatically, such as for software installations or the different managed applications. For others, such as the logged events for resource monitoring, they must be uploaded via operational rules. The respective rules are explained in the operational rule steps reference.

The following sections are discussed in this topic:

The Alerts and Events node provides the following selection options which can be combined for the display. When opened, the table of this node is empty. Click Find to view alerts and events.

For more information, see Event log model list.

Filtering alerts and events

1. Select the desired event log model from the Model Name drop-down box.
   To filter for a specific status of the current model, do not modify this selection.

2. Select the following criteria to further filter the alerts and events of the selected model:
   • Select a specific status value from the Status drop-down box to display only alerts/events of a specific status type.

   • To filter for events of a specific timeframe select the start and end date of the desired timeframe in the calendar boxes.
     You can use only one criteria for filtering or you can use a combination of them.

3. Click Find .

The table will refresh and display only those alerts/events that comply with the selected criteria.

Acknowledging alerts

After you access the Alerts and Events node, the alert icon in the status bar disappears. However, the status of the alerts themselves has not yet changed.

To acknowledge specific alerts,

1. Mark the alerts to be acknowledged in the table in the right window pane.
2. Select Edit > Acknowledge Alerts  .
   A confirmation window displays.
3. Select Yes to confirm and proceed with the action.

The status of the selected alerts will now be changed from Unnotified Alerts to Acknowledged Alerts.

Purging alerts and events

Alerts and events can be purged. Be careful when using this operation. All alerts and events of this event log model for the current device/device group will be irrevocably deleted from the database.

1. Click Purge .
   A confirmation window appears.
2. Click Yes to confirm.
   Another confirmation window appears if one or more of the selected alerts/events has a connected incident ticket in BMC Remedyforce or BMC FootPrints Service Core .
3. If the incident tickets that were created in BMC Remedyforce should be closed at the same time, click Yes; otherwise click No .

All alerts and events will be deleted from the database and, if requested, the status of the connected incident ticket(s) in BMC Remedyforce or BMC FootPrints Service Core will be changed to Closed.

Deleting individual alerts and events

It is possible to delete individual alerts and events that are no longer required.

1. Select the alert(s)/event(s) to delete in the table to the right.
2. Click Edit > Delete .
   A confirmation window appears.
3. Click Yes to confirm.
   Another confirmation window appears if one or more of the selected alerts/events has a connected incident ticket in BMC Remedyforce .
4. If the incident tickets that were created in BMC Remedyforce should be closed at the same time click Yes , otherwise click No .

All selected alerts and events will be deleted from the database and, if requested, the status of the connected incident ticket(s) in BMC Remedyforce will be changed to Closed .