Troubleshooting BMC Helix Digital Workplace Notifications

This topic describes how to troubleshoot notifications within BMC Helix Digital Workplace. The goal is to help you fix common issues regarding the different notifications that BMC Helix Digital Workplace offers.

How do BMC Helix Digital Workplace notifications work?

BMC Helix Digital Workplace has a stand-alone notification system that is independent from BMC Helix ITSM email notifications, but can be combined with BMC Helix ITSM’s system notifications. The BMC Helix ITSM email notifications are implemented in the BMC Helix Digital Workplace code using templates that are stored in the jar files that are part of the application libraries deployed to the Tomcat web server.

BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog Services notifications must be enabled in BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog Admin Console.

Notifications in BMC Helix Digital Workplace

BMC Helix Digital Workplace sends three type of notifications:

• In-app notifications, also known as Bell notifications.
• Push notifications
• Email notifications

 Make sure you have configured the BMC Helix Digital Workplace notifications according to the documentation: Managing-broadcasts-and-notifications-for-end-users.

Environmental details

Know the current BMC Helix Digital Workplace version and build to help verify whether there is a known defect related to notifications:

BMC Helix Digital Workplace Version: <servername>:<port>/dwp/rest/version 

Monitor the JVM Settings for BMC Helix Digital Workplace Tomcat.  Low memory values could prevent notifications from going out. 

Resolution for common issues

To resolve the problem, we can identify particular points of the issue or use case.

• What kind of notifications are not working?
• Are all users affected or does this issue only happen for a particular user?
• What events are not triggering notifications?
• When did it start? For example, did this behavior start after an upgrade or configuration change.
• It is an intermittent issue? Can you reproduce the issue as desired?

The following table provides resolutions to some common issues:

In-app notifications (Bell notifications)

Issue	Resolution
A particular user is unable to see in-app notifications.	By default, notifications in BMC Helix Digital Workplace are turned on for each user. Verify whether the notifications are enabled in the BMC Helix Digital Workplace end user console, by selecting Preferences > Notification settings.
All users are unable to see in-app notifications.	As a BMC Helix Digital Workplace administrator, access dwp-notifications.log file from dwp/rest/test/logs/dwp-notifications.log look for exceptions. You can also contact BMC support and share this file. d Social port needs to be enabled in the firewall. For a server group environment, make sure that the master pod is running.
Only Approval notifications are failing.	Confirm Approvals are configured in /dwp/admin/configuration/approval.html
Approval in-app notifications are taking too long to show up.	Check the poller interval that is configured in the connect-dwp.properties file and adjust if necessary(?).

 Email notifications

A particular user doesn’t receive email notifications.	Verify that the user has a valid email account with the company’s server and configure the mail server information. Verify that notifications are enabled in the BMC Helix Digital Workplace end-user console by selecting Preferences > Notification settings. Verify that the user login ID is in the same case in the BMC Helix ITSM CTM:People form and in the DWP USER_PREFERENCES table.
All users are unable to receive email notifications.	Validate the settings and Backend URL in BMC Helix Digital Workplace Admin console by going  to Configuration > Email and Notifications.
Only survey notifications are not being triggered.	Validate that surveys are enabled and SMTP is configured under connect-dwp.properties (BMC Helix Digital Workplace Tomcat external conf folder).

BMC Helix Digital Workplace logs for notification issues

During troubleshooting of notification issues, the dwp.log and dwp-notifications.log files in debug mode is useful because it can provide more details, including whether a specific error occurred on BMC Helix Digital Workplace:

Configuring-logs-for-BMC-Helix-Digital-Workplace

BMC Helix Digital Workplace additional documentation

Notifications from BMC Helix Digital Workplace

Configuring-status-updates-and-notifications

Survey

Mapping-satisfaction-surveys-to-service-requests

BMC Helix Digital Workplace Approval Configuration

Setting-up-approvals

Configuring-how-approval-requests-are-displayed-in-BMC-Helix-Digital-Workplace-end-user-console 

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