Cisco Process Orchestrator User Guide 3.5.1

Monitoring Operations

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The Operations workspace is used to monitor the processes that are scheduled to execute, view processes that are currently running, and verify that processes have successfully completed. The view also provides auditing information relating to system event history for actions that have occurred within Cisco Process Orchestrator and process information generated when the defined processes are executed.

The Getting Started > Operations view displays task shortcuts to view process instances, process instance activities, and the other system activity in the results pane. The following tasks can be performed from this view:

• Monitor Operations—Launches the Activity Views folder which includes the options to display information about the activities that are in progress, scheduled or have been completed.See Operations—Activity Views for more information.
• View Auditing—Launches the Auditing view which displays the system event history for actions that have occurred within Cisco Process Orchestrator. See Operations > Auditing View for more information.
• Define New Objects—Launches the Getting Started > Definitions view which displays the options for creating a new process and defining new objects to be associated with a process. See Getting Started > Definitions for more information.
• Launch Web Console—Launches the Cisco Process Orchestrator Web console to provide users with a web-based view of the scaled-back Operations workspace on the expert Cisco Process Orchestrator console.
• Launch Timeline View—Launches the Operational Timeline View of the activities in the form of histogram. The height of the projection corresponds to the number of activities in the interval represented. You can zoom the Timeline with mouse wheel scroll or a pinch-zoom gesture on a track pad or a touch screen device.

– Track Current Time—Check this checkbox to scroll the Timeline automatically, when the current time indicator goes out of scope.

This checkbox will be unchecked automatically if you scroll manually with the scrollbar, and in case you zoom closer than one minute interval.

– Display activities—Check this check box to display the activities in tree view along with the processes.

Tree view is a railroad diagram, with circles denoting process instances, and short horizontal bars denoting process instances. The tree view has text coloring that denotes the following:

Blue: Running instance.

Black: Succeeded instance.

Light blue: Instance which has not been started yet.

Orange: Canceled

Red: Failed

On the tree itself instances are colored randomly, one color for a process instance and it's child activities. Two process instances are not guaranteed to get a different color, but there is a guarantee that they get the same color each time you see them, even after the view is reopened.

– Histogram level of details—This scrollbar allows you to adjust the level of detail of the histogram display of activity counts in the measured time intervals. With lower level of detail, more individual activity instances will fall into the longer intervals represented by the histogram bars.

You can filter by individual process instances. Click on the plus button in front of the process instance name in the tree view to add the filter for a process instance. The process instances that are selected for filtering are listed above the tree view. You can turn off the filtering temporary with the checkbox in front of the individual process instance filters or remove them. The plus button on the specific process instance becomes highlighted when there is such a filter. Clicking the plus button again will remove the filter.

These filters can be useful to drill down the hierarchy of the process instances. If an individual process instance is selected in the filters and is active, all of the child process instances will be displayed. You can also turn off individual filters, which is useful if you want to scope to specific child process instance.

When you scroll down a large tree view, some parent process instances would go out of scope, but if you see a child process instance or child activity of such an instance on screen, all of its parents will be displayed anyway in hatched color, so you always see all of the parents of every item you currently see on screen. A hatched color item could indicate that the parents are out of scope either by the vertical scroll position, either by the timeline view scroll position, and there is possibility something between them, which you could discover by scrolling.

The Operations workspace displays:

• The status of processes and activities executing, scheduled, or recently executed by the application.
• Alerts, incidents, and approvals in the product.
• System messages about status and errors within the Process Orchestrator server or adapters.

The options provided by this workspace include:

The Process Views folder includes all the defined processes and their associated activity instances that are in progress, scheduled or have been completed. From this view, you can see detailed information about all processes that have been triggered, executed adhoc, or are scheduled for execution.

You can review both process and activity instances in the Process Views folders when querying the properties and status of process instances. Each Process View has two separate results panes:

• The top results pane displays the process definitions for the selected view. This view also allows you, if you have the appropriate rights, to access the Process Editor to modify the configuration of the process, to start the process, and enable or disable the process.
• The bottom results pane is automatically filtered to show only the instances of the process whose definition is selected in the top panel.

The Definitions > Processes view displays all defined processes that are in the application. This includes all processes that have been authored in the Process Editor and the processes that have been imported in automation packs.

Monitoring Target Views

Target views allow you to view ongoing automation in the context of the targets or services on which it acts. You can filter the list of all targets to focus in on a specific type, or by the name of a target such as an Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud service request. After selecting a target, you can see the processes that act on that target type and all process activity related to that target.

The Operations > Target Views folder displays the defined targets and their associated activity instances that are in progress, scheduled or have been completed.

Monitoring Process Views

The Operations > Process View folders display all processes that have been started, scheduled to start, started by a trigger, or started ad hoc. Each Process view display can be filtered to display by the name, category, or column view.

Use the Definitions > Processes View to display the defined processes.

Note To add, remove, or sort column headings on the display, see Configuring Columns.

Monitoring Activity Views

The Operations > Activity Views folders display processes and their associated activities that have been started, scheduled to start, started by a trigger, or started ad hoc. Each Activity view display can be filtered to display by the date/time of execution, category, or column view.

From this view, detailed information is provided about all the activity instances that are started, running and scheduled to run. If you have the appropriate security rights, you can create and modify tasks from this view.

Activity Views include a set of predefined views that display information about the status of activities within the processes. From this view, you can view activities that have been triggered, executed ad hoc, view all activities, and view all scheduled activities.

Certain activities display additional activity instance information. For example, there will be certain activities that generate information based on the defined properties of the activities. In those situations, the activity instance properties displayed from the Operations > Activity View will show the read-only configuration properties as well as the generated results of the configuration properties.

Step 1 Choose Operations > Activity Views , then choose one of the following options:

The selected view displays in the Results pane.

Step 2 Use the Filter by [Object] drop-down list to display processes or activities according to its assigned category in the Results pane.

The default selection is <No Filter>. After the initial change to the selection, the last selected item displays.

Step 3 Filter the results as necessary (see Monitoring Process Views).

Step 4 To view additional information about an instance, highlight it and use one of the following methods to launch the Process Viewer:

• From the View Results pane, double-click the appropriate process instance.
• From the Details pane, click any hyperlink (see Details Pane).

Filtering Views

You can filter the results by a range of dates, by a start or end period, by days to offset, by a specific time period, and so on.

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Step 1 Choose Operations > [Operation] > [Views option] .

Step 2 Use the Filter by [Object] drop-down list to display processes or activities according to its assigned category in the Results pane.

The default selection is <No Filter>. After the initial change to the selection, the last selected item displays.

Step 3 On the [Views option] subheader, choose the appropriate category and time period to display.

For example, you can filter the results by:

• Object (category, name, description, automation pack, trigger name or type, or lock option)
• Date range (from and to)
• Start time or end time period

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Note To use the current time as the Start Time or End Time period in which the activities are displayed, do not make any changes to Time menu options.

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To modify the start and end times, choose:

– Start—Default option uses the current time on the Console

– Back—Adjusts the number of hours that precede the current Console time

– Forward—Adjusts the number of hours ahead of the current Console time

• Current time period

The navigation arrows located on each side of the Calendar icon select the next day on the Back and Forward options on the Start Date and End Date submenu.

– The Back arrow chooses the previous day prior to the currently selected day on the Back submenu for the starting and ending dates. For example, if Yesterday is currently selected, then clicking the Back arrow changes the display selection to 2 days before today.

– The Forward arrow chooses the day after the currently selected day. For example, if Tomorrow is currently selected, then clicking the Forward arrow changes the display selection to 2 days after today.

• Calendar date
• A specific date
• Days to offset—Use the More option on the Before today and After today submenus to enter a specific number of days for the start date. Use Select Day Offset when the appropriate number of days to offset is not on the predefined list.

To specify days before the displayed value, select or enter a negative number.

• Time period to offset—Use the More option on the Back and Forward submenus to enter the specific hours and minutes for the end and start time. Click Select Time Offset when the number of hours and minutes to offset is not on the predefined list.

To specify hours or minutes before the displayed value, select or enter a negative number.

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Searching Work

The Operations > Search Work view displays the results of the query for processes and activities based on the specified filter options. The Search Work view displays all processes and activities that are scheduled to be performed during the selected display time period.

On the Operations workspace, choose Search Work .

Monitoring Task Views

Tasks allow a process to create an IT record or perform human interaction, and provide ownership and a lifecycle. Process Orchestrator enables the user to act on tasks within the operator console, which managers can use to set or change assignments to those on their staff. Assignment changes, state changes, and all other changes are audited, so you can keep track of exactly who did what in the system.

The Operations > Tasks view displays all tasks or all tasks that have been assigned to a specific user or group.

The Tasks display can be filtered to display by category, task type, and status. You can also decide which task view to display.

From this view, detailed information is provided about all the alerts, incidents, and other tasks that are assigned, in progress, or have been completed. If you have the appropriate security rights, you can create and modify tasks from this view.

Step 1 Choose Operations > Task Views .

Step 2 To access detailed information about a task view, click the Task Views folder and choose one of the following options.

Step 3 On the Task Views Header, choose the appropriate filtering options to display.

Searching Tasks

The Operations > Search Tasks view displays all tasks created or defined in Process Orchestrator. The results of the query are based on the specified filter options. The following topics describe the available search options:

• Customizing the Search Tasks Header
• Filtering Search Results
• Filtering Display by [Objects]

Defining Task Rules

Task rules provide a list of rules that act on new tasks or task changes to handle cases such as assignments, changing alert or incident severities, or setting customer-specific categories on tasks.

Whenever a task is created, Process Orchestrator goes through the settings and conditions of each task rule that is listed and enabled. If the conditions and settings in the rule are satisfied, the task rule is executed. Task rules are executed according to the order in which they are displayed in the list.

Before You Begin

By default, only users with administrative rights can create and update task rules from the Definitions > Task Rules view. However, the security settings can be changed, if necessary, by the Process Orchestrator administrator.

Step 1 Choose Definitions > Task Rules , then on the toolbar, choose New > [Task Rule] .

Step 2 On the [Task Rule] property pages, define the properties.

Note The property pages might display as display-only if the task rule definition is shipped as part of the product or you do not have the appropriate rights.

• Click the General tab and enter the required information.
• Click the Task Types tab to select the task types to be executed by the rule.
• Click the Conditions tab and click the appropriate panel to indicate the type of condition equation to be used to trigger the task rule.
• Click the Assign tab and specify the assignees for task rule.

Step 3 Click OK to close the property sheet.

You can create the following task rules:

Searching IT Records

The Operations > Search IT Records view displays only the alerts, incidents, and change requests created in Process Orchestrator. The results of the query are based on the specified filter options. You can search by the assignee, category, task type, and status.

Monitoring Auditing Information

The Auditing View displays the system auditing logs for system events that have occurred within Cisco Process Orchestrator for each Process Orchestrator server in the environment.Use this view to:

• Display detailed information regarding system events that have occurred within Process Orchestrator, such as start and shut down time and error occurrences.
• Filter the results by Orchestration Server name.

Step 1 Choose Operations > Auditing > System .

Step 2 To view the audit logs for a specific server in your environment, enter the server name in the Orchestration Server filter text box.

Step 3 From the Auditing Log Results pane, highlight the appropriate log entry, right-click and choose Properties .

Step 4 To add, remove, or sort column headings on the display, see Configuring Columns.