Monitor user guide

ConnectPlaza Monitor

About

Monitor is an application that is part of the ConnectPlaza Studio suite, and is intended to monitor notifications that are generated from rules defined in Control. These rules give the user a fine level of control over Monitor, where every Monitor-user can observe what they consider important by specifying rules on the metrics that matter to them.

For more information on specifying rules, please check this page: https://www.connectplaza.com/doc/en/technical-guide/control/control-rules.html

The Monitor application can be found here: https://www.connectplaza.com/monitor/

Views

Login

If the user is not logged in, the screen below will be showed. By entering a correct username and password, then pressing the Log In button, the user will be logged in. The ConnectPlaza Studio suite is configured as a single sign-on (SSO) application suite, so being logged in in any of the ConnectPlaza Studio applications will automatically log you in into Monitor.

=== All agents overview

The first screen of the Monitor application shows an overview of all the agents that have been started at least once, and have completed a successful license check. An example overview can be seen below.

The lower half of this screen shows an overview of the notifications received by all of the above agents. These can be filtered by the Notification level and the message. This portion of the screen can be resized to the user's preferred size, even possibly covering the Agent Overview to see the notifications in full screen, or can also be collapsed to show the All agents overview in full screen.

Agent

A single agent element consists of four parts. A colored round indicator, the name of the agent, the heartbeat icon and the current status. An example:

Indicator	Description
	|Status of the ConnectPlaza agent. This can be the following colours:  Green -> All is well Yellow -> Warnings received Red -> Errors encountered Grey -> ConnectPlaza agent is Offline
	An indication of the agent's heartbeat. If this is green, a heartbeat is received in the last 60 seconds from the ConnectPlaza agent. If this is not the case, this icon will be red
	Name of the ConnectPlaza agent.
	Current status of the ConnectPlaza agent.

All agent notifications overview

This view shows all received notifications for all agents. These notifications can be sorted and filtered as indicated below.

Field	Description
Filters
Error (N)	Selection of errors in the messages list. N = Number of errors in the messages list.
Info (N)	Selection of info messages in the messages list. N = Number of INFO messages in the messages list.
OK (N)	Selection of OK messages in the messages list. N = Number of OK messages in the messages list.
Filter message	Filter notification messages on the "Notification message" field.
	Acknowledge all currently received and stored notifications. All online agent indicators will turn green again, and their status will return to "ONLINE".
Notifications
Notification	The notification will disappear if you *Acknowledge* the notification. You can do this by clicking the
Sort	Sort the notifications by one of the following properties by clicking the associated header: Timestamp Level Notification Message Clicking a header will sort the notifications by the clicked property, in ascending order. Clicking the same header once more, will switch the sort from ascending to descending order.

=== Agent detail overview

Clicking an agent will open a dialog containing details about that specific agent, and will show a notification overview specific for that agent.

Field	Description
Details
	The name, heartbeat state and the timestamp of the last heartbeat.
Identification	The selected ConnectPlaza agent identification name.
Licensekey	The license key of this ConnectPlaza agent.
Agent version	The current version of your ConnectPlaza agent.
Java version	The current Java version your ConnectPlaza agent is using.
Status	The current status of your ConnectPlaza agent.
License valid	Indication if your last license check is valid for this ConnectPlaza agent, and the date your ConnectPlaza agent License expires.
Control installed	Indication if your Control Interface is installed.
Analyze installed	Indication if your Analyze Interface is installed.
Flows (current/max)	he current and maximum number of flows your ConnectPlaza agent may run. The current amount of flows in use is not a real time metric, and is calculated once a day. This number may not be accurate.
Tags	Tags for this ConnectPlaza agent.
Filter
Error (N)	Selection of errors in the messages list. N = Number of errors in the messages list.
Warning(N)	Selection of warnings in the messages list. N = Number of warnings in the messages list.
Info (N)	Selection of info messages in the messages list. N = Number of INFO messages in the messages list.
OK (N)	Selection of OK messages in the messages list. N = Number of OK messages in the messages list.
Filter message	Filter notification messages on the "Notification message" field
Notifications
Notification	The message will disappear if you Acknowledge the message. You can do this by clicking the
Sort	Sort the notifications by one of the following properties by clicking the associated header: Timestamp Level Notification Message Clicking a header will sort the notifications by the clicked property, in ascending order. Clicking the same header once more, will switch the sort from ascending to descending order.
	If this checkbox is not checked, the data is Live. The user has a live view of all the notifications for the current ConnectPlaza agent. You can set the notifications on Hold by checking the checkbox, which will make Monitor stop receiving new notifications. This only changes the behavior of the current view, it won't affect the All agent overview.
	Acknowledge all notifications for this specific agent. The indicator will turn green again, and the agent status will change to "ONLINE".
	Close this detail screen.

Agent Statuses and notification levels

Initial agent status

Each agent starts at displaying the status "UNKNOWN", but an initial check is performed immediately to see if the ConnectPlaza Control Interface is deployed. Agents that do not, will display a status called "MISSING CONTROL".

If an agent does have a ConnectPlaza Control Interface installed, the agent will display a status called "AWAITING HEARTBEAT". Control publishes an unseen heartbeat notification every 60 seconds. If Monitor receives such a heartbeat within 60 seconds, it will switch the agent status to "ONLINE". If it does not, the agent status will switch to "OFFLINE" after 60 seconds.

ConnectPlaza Monitor uses this, together with other notifications published by Control to determine agent status.

Possible agent statuses

An overview showing all the possible statuses an agent can have within Monitor.

UNKNOWN

The initial status of every agent, before the check for the ConnectPlaza Control Interface is performed.

MISSING CONTROL

At startup, an initial check is performed to see if the ConnectPlaza Control Interface is deployed. Agents that do not, will display a status called "MISSING CONTROL". If this status is shown, please check if the ConnectPlaza Control Interface is installed correctly in Deploy, under System Interfaces.

AWAITING HEARTBEAT

If ConnectPlaza Control Interface is installed, the agent will switch to a status called "AWAITING HEARTBEAT". Control publishes an unseen heartbeat notification every 60 seconds. If Monitor receives such a heartbeat within 60 seconds, it will switch the agent status to "ONLINE". If it does not, the agent status will switch to "OFFLINE".

ONLINE

An agent with the status "ONLINE" has received an invisible heartbeat notification from Control in the last 60 seconds.

OFFLINE

An agent that has not received an invisible heartbeat notification from Control in the last 60 seconds, will display the status "OFFLINE".

ERROR

Indicates an "ERROR"-level notification has been received from Control.

WARNING

Indicates an "WARNING"-level notification has been received from Control.

INFO

Indicates an "INFO"-level notification has been received from Control.

NOTE: If an agent status is ERROR, WARNING or INFO, it displays the highest received notification level that it still holds. "OK"-level notifications do not switch the agent's status.

Notification levels

Control can publish notifications in five different levels. Four of these notification levels can influence the status of an agent in Monitor, and will change the agent status based on the highest level that is received.

HEARTBEART

A Heartbeat notification is not shown in the notification overviews, but is used to see if an agent status is ONLINE or OFFLINE. It is mostly invisible to the user, other than the color of the heartbeat icon.

Heartbeat icon	Agent state
	ONLINE
	OFFLINE

The absence of this heartbeat notification, will change the agent status to OFFLINE, even if the agent is unresponsive.

OK

The lowest visible level of notifications, intended to show information to the Monitor-user without changing the agent status. The notification overviews will show a notification of this level and above, but Monitor has no other behaviour associated with it.

INFO

This level of notification is intended to show information to the Monitor-user, but also changes the agent status to "INFO".

WARNING

This level of notification is intended to warn the Monitor-user that something unexpected might be occurring. It also changes the agent status to "WARNING".

ERROR

The highest level of notification, intended to indicate that an error has occurred or something is wrong. Receiving one, will change the agent status to "ERROR". An agent will not show any other status, unless it goes offline or the Error notification is acknowledged.

Notification TTL

When there is no Monitor client connected, the notifications that have a TTL (time to live) will be stored in a queue. When logging in, these messages will be fetched first, after which the client will start listening for notifications and fetching them automatically.

If the TTL of these notification passes, these notifications will automatically be removed from the queue. The TTL depends on the level of the notification, as shown in the table below.

NOTE: OK and HEARTBEAT level notifications have no time to live, so won't be queued if no client is connected.