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The GUI
  
The GUI
Navigation
The new generation GUI in op5 Monitor is built to be as simple as possible to use. Even if the GUI has a new look and feel in many ways it works the same as the old one. You will recognize most of the features from the CGIs.
In-line help
A manual is great but often you only need to get a fast answer about a special part of op5 Monitor.
To get information from the in-line help
1 Click the help icon
This gives you a small frame containing the help text.
2 Click anywhere outside the help text to hide it.
 
Login and logout
To login to op5 Monitor
First of all you need to login before you can start using op5 Monitor. To login to the op5 Monitor GUI:
1 Point your browser to the portal page of your op5 Monitor server
( https://yourserver/ )
2 Click op5 Monitor:
3 Enter login and password.
 
The default username is: monitor
The default password is: monitor
4 Click Login
To logout from op5 Monitor
To logout from op5 Monitor just click Log out in the upper right corner of the GUI.
Main menu
The navigation in op5 Monitor is simple and can be found in the top of the GUI. There are five main sections, seen from the left.
Information
Monitoring
Reports
Filters
Configuration
There are also five quickbar buttons.
Refresh
Page settings
Unhandled problems
Tactical Overview
Manage quickbar
Add custom quickbar link
To add a custom link to the quickbar menu select the small manage quickbar menu icon to right of the quickbar.
Add the URI, name and icon for your custom link
Pop up graphs and comments
In every view where you find the icons for
graphs
comments
You can hover the mouse pointer over the icon and get a pop up looking like this
Changing behaviour of the pop ups
You might not want to have those pop ups every time you hover with the mouse over one of the graph or comment icons. Then you can change that behaviour in My account.
To change the behaviour of the pop ups
1 Open up My account. Go to Configuration menu and selecting My Account
2 Set either a delay or turn the pop ups of completely. The delay time is in ms.
3 Click Save.
Mouse over host
To quickly show the host address of a host, hold the mouse over the hostname. A pop-up will appear with the host address.
Keyboard commands
The keyboard commands are shortcuts to some of the features in the op5 Monitor GUI. The following keyboard commands are available:
search
pause
paging to the left
paging to the right
Table 1 Default keyboards commands
Function
Default command
Description
Search
Alt+Shift+f
Set focus to the search field of the GUI.
Pause
Alt+Shift+p
Pause or activate the refresh of all the listviews in the GUI.
Pause will be valid as long as you are navigating on "list views" only. Go to host or service extinfo, configure or any other non "list view" page and then the pause will be back to normal.
Paging to the left
Alt+Shift+left
Takes you to the left in a view that has more than one page.
Paging to the right
Alt+Shift+right
Takes you to the right in a view that has more than one page.
By default the keyboard commands are disabled. To enable the keyboard commands and change their settings take a look at Keyboard commands used in the GUI on page 135.
Tactical overview
The Tactical Overview is a personal view where widgets can be placed to show different information.
Layout
The layout of the tactical overview is split in to three sections with different size of the widget width.
The first section is split into three columns, each column can contain one widget.
The second section contains two columns and the third is one column.
Widgets
Widgets are covered in Widgets on page 35
Multiple host and service commands
Multiple commands is used to apply a single command to one or more host or services at the same time.
In almost every view in the monitoring section you may perform commands on the objects displayed in the view. This is very useful if you, for instance, have a bigger problem with one or many services and you want to acknowledge all of them at once.
Multiple host commands list
Schedule downtime
Cancel Scheduled downtime
Acknowledge
Remove problem acknowledgement
Disable host notifications
Enable host notifications
Disable notifications for all services
Disable Active checks
Enable Active checks
Reschedule host check
Add host comment
Delete host
Multiple service commands list
Schedule downtime
Cancel Scheduled downtime
Acknowledge
Remove problem acknowledgement
Disable service notifications
Enable service notifications
Disable Active checks
Enable Active checks
Reschedule service check
Add service comment
Delete Service(s)
Example
In this example we will send acknowledgements to a larger number of services.
To execute multiple commands
1 Open up Unhandled problems filter under the filter menu.
2 Select the services problems you like to acknowledge.
3 Click Send Multi Action below the search field
(It is located on top of the list.)
4 Chose Acknowledge in Select Action drop down list just below the list and click Submit.
5 Type in a comment and click Submit.

Quick Action Menu
For quick access to some host and service commands you can access the Quick action menu.
The menu can be accessed thrugh right clicking on the status icon in front of a host or service.
This menu will only appear if you are ‘Authorized for system commands’ under Access Rights in the configuration.
Information about the different actions can be found in the Monitoring chapter, Introduction on page 44
Host Actions
The actions that are available on a host are:
The actions accessible from the host quick access menu are:
Schedule Downtime
Cancel Schedule downtime
Acknowledge
Remove problem acknowledgement
Disable host notifications
Enable host notifications
Disable notifications for all services
Disable active checks
Enable active checks
Reschedule host check
Schedule a check for all services on this host
Add host comment
Service Actions
The actions that are available on a service are:
Schedule Downtime
Cancel Schedule downtime
Acknowledge
Remove problem acknowledgement
Disable/Enable service notifications
Disable/Enable active checks
Reschedule service check
Add service comment
Listviews
Listviews are all views that lists host, services, hostgroups etc.
The contents of the lists is defiend by filters, see Filters on page 24.
The listview is divided into two parts. One is the top banner that includes a summary of the content in the listview and the other one is the content itself.
The following views, or tables, uses listviews
Hosts
Services
Hostgroups
Servicegroups
Comments
Downtimes
Contacts
Notifications
Saved filters
Columns
The different columns in the content can be set under My Account in the Configuration menu.
The different tables can have its own set of columns.
To change what columns to show in a table change default to a list of the columns that you want to see.
For example if you would like to view only Status, Host name, Service name and the state in the service-view, you need to enter:
host_state,host_name,description, state
It is also possible to hide one column by using a “-” before the column that you would like to remove from the table. If you want to hide the attempts column enter:
default, -attempt
Column list
Hosts
Column
Description
select
The select checkbox for the host-object
state
The state of the host. UP, DOWN, UNREACHABLE or PENDING.
name
The hostname
alias
The alias of the host
status
The column where comments, graphs and notification status is shown
action
Links to configuration, extra host notes etc.
last_check
The date and time when the host was last checked
duration
Time for how long the host has been in it’s current state
status_information
The output from the last check command
services_num_all
Total number of services on the host
services_num_warning
Total number of services on the host in state WARNING
services_num_critical
Total number of services on the host in state CRITICAL
services_num_unknown
Total number of services on the host in state UNKNOWN
services_num_pending
Total number of services on the host in state PENDING
Services
Column
Description
host_state
The state of the host on which the service is located
host_name
The name of the host on which the service is located
select
The select checkbox for the service-object
state
The state of the service. OK, WARNING, CRITICAL, UNKNOWN or PENDING
description
The description (name) of the service-check
status
The column where comments, graphs and notification status is shown
action
Links to configuration, extra service notes etc.
last_check
The date and time when the service was last checked
duration
Time for how long the service has been in its current state
attempt
The number of attempts needed before a notification is sent out.
status_information
The output from the last check command
Host groups
Column
Description
name
The name of the hostgroup
actions
Links to hostgroup commands
host_status_summary
Shows the total number of hosts and its states in the hostgroup
service_status_summary
Shows the total number of services in the hostgroup and their states
Service groups
Column
Description
name
The name of the servicegroup
actions
Links to servicegroup commands
service_status_summary
Shows the total number of services in the servicegroup and it states
Comments
Column
Description
select
Select checkbox for the comment
id
ID of the comment
object_type
Show the object type for the comment. Host or Service
host_state
The state of the host on which the comment is located
host_name
The name of the host on which the comment is located
service_state
The state of the service on which the comment is located
service_description
The name of the service on which the comment is located
entry_time
The submisson date and time of the comment
author
Shows the author of the comment
comment
The comment it self.
persistent
Shows if the comment is persistent or not
expires
The time and date when the comment expires
actions
The action for the comment, delete comment
Downtimes
Column
Description
select
Select checkbox for the scheduled downtime entry
id
ID of the scheduled downtime entry
object_type
Show the object type affected by the scheduled downtime. Host or Service
host_state
The current state of the host on which the scheduled downtime is located
host_name
The name of the host on which the scheduled downtime is located
service_state
The current state of the service on which the scheduled downtime is located
service_description
The name of the service on which the scheduled downtime is located
entry_time
When the scheduled downtime was created
author
Shows by whom the scheduled downtime was created.
comment
The comment of the scheduled downtime.
start_time
Date and time for when the objects enters the scheduled downtime
end_time
Date and time for when the objects exits the scheduled downtime
actions
The action for the comment, delete comment
type
Shows if the scheduled downtime is fixed or flexible
duration
Shows how long the object will be in scheduled downtime if flexible schedule is used.
triggered_by
Shows if the scheduled downtime is triggered by another event.
actions
The action for the scheduled downtime. Remove is the only action available for scheduled downtime.
Contacts
Column
Description
name
The contacts name
alias
The contacts alias
Notifications
Column
Description
state
The state (OK, WARNING, DOWN etc.) of the object in the notification
host_name
The hosts name in the notification
service_description
The name of the service in the notification. Only valid for service notification
time
The date and time of the notification
contact
To which contact the notification was sent
notification_command
Shows which notification command that was used for the notification
status_information
The check command output from the check
Saved filters
Column
Description
icon
Shows the designated icon for the filter
scope
Shows if the filter is a global filter or a personal filter
name
The name of the filter
owner
Shows who created the filter
actions
Action for the filter, only delete is available
Custom columns
It is possible to create a custom column if the column isn’t available from the standard columns.
The format is “<label>” = <data> where <data> is the source of the data, for example if you would like to create a column that show the note of a host set in the configuration:
“Notes” = notes
It is also possible to fetch. For example the host notes on a service as well, by using the host.notes label.
Links in custom columns
It is also possible to add HTML code into the column. Let’s say that you have a note with an ID that corresponds to the system in your CMS database and you would like to create a link directly to that object.
"Asset ID" = "<a href=\"http://inventory.example.org/?asset=" + notes + "\">Asset " + notes + "</a>"
Custom variables
To show a custom variable in a column use the format custom_variable.<VARIABLE_NAME>. The custom variable should be used without the underscore prefix.
Using the same example as above, but this time we have the ID in a custom variable called ASSETID
"Asset ID" = "<a href=\"http://inventory.example.org/?asset=" + custom_variables.ASSETID + "\">Asset " + custom_variables.ASSETID + "</a>"
Filters
Filters can be used to filter out content in op5 Monitor. They can be based on names, states, comments or other information.
Filters can be applied on listviews. All listview content is based on filters, so for example when viewing a host and its services the view is based on a filter that can be manipulated.
Edit filter
To edit a filter, click on the filter icon in the listview
You can either edit the filter manually or graphically. When editing a filter graphically the manual string is automatically shown. We will focus on the graphical design of filters.
Categories
There are nine categories to choose from that will affect the layout of the listview.
Host
Service
Host Group
Service Group
Comments
Downtimes
Contacts
Notifications
Saved Filters
Filter Groups
A filter group is a logical “AND” or “OR” operator. There is also a negate group.
In each filter group there can be several rules and sub-groups.
Rule
A rule contains an actual search field. Different types of categories have different types of rules. A rule can, for example, be host.name or service.group.
Examples
Example 1
Here we will list all services that are notifying to contact-group “support-group” and is a member of the hostgroup “network”.
Manual Input: [services] contact_groups >= "support-group" and groups >= "network"
Example 2
In this example we will list all services that uses the check command “check_tcp”
Manual Input: [services] check_command ~~ "check_tcp"
Example 3
Here we would like to list all services that contains the description “www” and is not located on the vmware host “vmware1-sth”. (For this to work parent/child relationships must have been set)
Manual input: [services] description ~~ "www" and not (host.parents >= "vmware1-sth")
Note: Note that we use the negate (not) option on the host.parents rule.
Save filters
To save a filter, you need to enter a name and click on save filter in the filter dialog.
To make the filter global, accessible for everyone, select Make global before you save the filter.
Save filters are accessible from the filter menu.
Remove filters
Remove a saved filter by selecting Manage and view filters from the filters menu.
Use the delete icon behind the filter that you would like to remove.
Searching
op5 Monitor has got a search functionality that makes it easy to find:
Hosts
Services
Host groups
Service groups
Notes
Status information
Note: The search is case insensitive.
The result is limited to maximum 10 result rows per object type.
In the upper right corner of the GUI you find the search input field:
Simple search
To perform a simple search
1 Enter the search string in the input field shown in Searching on page 28 and press Enter.
2 While you are typing your search string op5 Monitor will show you a list of hosts matching the string.
3 If you click on a host in the drop down list you will be redirected to the Service Status Details For Host page for the host you clicked on. The same happens if the search found only one object matching your search string.
op5 Monitor will search for hosts, services, service groups, host groups and notes matching the search string you entered.
The table below shows a list of in what parts of the object types is used in the search.
Object type
Variable
Host
host_name
host_alias
host_address
display_name
Service
service_description
display_name
Host group
hostgroup_name
alias
Service group
servicegroup_name
alias
Notes
Host notes
Service notes
Status Information
 
Advanced search
To make your search more specific you should use the advanced search features.
The following table describes the search parameters that can be used in the search function:
Short parameter
Long parameter
Description
h:
host:
Search for hosts
s:
service:
Search for services
hg:
hostgroup:
Search for host groups
sg:
servicegroup:
Search for service groups
si:
statusinformation:
Search for Status information using the output from the latest service / host check.
AND
 
The AND operator is used to filter records based on more than one condition
OR
 
The OR operator is used to filter records based on more than one condition
Note: Remember to not use any space between the : and the search string
Advanced search examples
Example 1 Search for hosts containing a certain string in the host name.
If you want to search for hosts only containing “server” in the host name
just enter the following in the search field:
h:server
or
host:server
Press enter to perform the search.
 
Example 2 Perform a search combining both hosts and services in the query.
In this example we want to find all services called either ping or http running on hosts called something like win or linux.
The query would then be:
h:win OR linux AND s:ping OR http
 
Example 3 Search for Status Information
To search for hosts and services having a certain string in their status output you shall write a query like this:
si:Connection refused
By using the si: search term you will search the output from the latest check.
 
Example 4 Show all hosts or services
You may also get a list of all services and all hosts from the search function.
To get a list showing all services and host you should write the search query like this:
s:% OR h:%
Example 5 Show all hosts, services, host groups and service groups
To get a complete list of all hosts, services, host groups and service groups you only need to write a query like this:
%
This will give you a result with all object types grouped in one page.
 
Notes search
To search for notes the notes column must be added to the listview.
Go to My Account under the Configuration menu.
Add the following to the table for hosts and/or services.
“Notes” = notes
It is also possible to fetch. For example the host notes on a service as well, by using the host.notes label.
Limiting the number of result objects
The default search result will is limited to 100 rows. This can be changed in the search query.
To change the limitation you only need to add limit with the number of lines to your query like this:
limit=10
The line above will give you max 10 rows in the search result.
To return all rows set:
limit=0
 
Search result
No matter if you use the simple or the advanced way to do your search you will end up with the same type of result list.
As you can see in the search result example below the search will be shown with one part for each type of object.
Just like in the normal views you can sort all columns in the search result.
Multiple actions
To do multiple actions from the search result the search result must first be viewed in listview.
To view the result in listview click on “View in listview” below each category.
Refresh time
Every view is automatically refreshed after a certain time.
The default Global refresh time for listviews is 90 seconds.
Pausing the page refresh
To pause the page refresh
1 Click Settings in the quickbar of the menu:
2 Check the Pause list view refresh check box and the Global refresh time is paused. Pause will be valid as long as you are navigating on "list views" only. Go to host or service extinfo, configure or any other non "list view" page and then the pause is back to normal.
Editing the refresh time
To edit the Global refresh time
1 Click on the Settings icon in the quickbar menu:
2 Pull the slider to increase or decrease the refresh time.
Once you have edited the Global refresh time a little notice will show up in the GUI. It tells you that the new Global refresh time is saved and looks like the picture below.
Refresh will be valid as long as you are navigating on "list views" only. Go to host or service extinfo, configure or any other non "list view" page and then the refresh is back to default
Widgets
Widgets are used to give the user a ability to personalize the Tactical Overview display status data to their needs.
The first thing you will see when you login to op5 Monitor is the Tactical overview and it looks like this:
In the Tactical Overview you may:
move around the widgets to different places
close the widgets
set individual refresh time for each widget
collapse and expand all individual widgets.
create another instance of the widget
scale the widgets over multiple columns
 
Note: All changes you make with the widgets are saved per user.
Widget list
op5 Monitor comes with a number of available widgets used to display data in Tactical Overview:
Unacknowledged Service Problems
Scheduled Downtime
Acknowledged Service Problems
Nagvis
Disabled Checks
Services
Host Performance
Merlin Node Status
Acknowledged Problems
Monitoring Performance
Hosts
Network Health
Monitoring Features
Unhandled Problems
Business Processes
Network Outages
Geomap
Beside this wide range of widgets you can find additional widgets on www.op5.org, or create a own widget that fits your needs. This is described in“op5 Monitor Administrators Manual”.
Widget parts
Below you see an example of what a widget can look like:
 
The following table describes the parts of a widget shown in the picture above.
Nr
Description
1
Widget header
2
Copy Widget
3
Collapse and Expand icon
4
Widget settings icon
5
Widget content
6
Hide widget
Renaming the widget header
The widget header displays the name of the widget.
To change the name in the widget header
1 Double click on the name in the widget header.
2 Type the new name in the text field.
3 Click OK to save the new name.
Collapse and expand
If you want to hide the content of a widget but still keep it on the Tactical overview page just click on the Collapse icon.
To show the widget again
Click on the Expand icon.
Widget settings
In this version of op5 Monitor the only setting you can change on a widget is refresh time
To set the refresh time on an individual widget follow the instructions below:
1 Click Widget settings icon
2 Move the slider to increase or decrease the refresh time.
Extended widget settings
As described in “Multiple instances on page 40” it is possible to create multiple copies of a widget.
This can be useful with some of the widgets we ship with op5 Monitor such as “Unacknowledged Service problems”. This widget displays the content of “Unhandled Problems” as default, but can be configured to use filters to display status information from servicegroups, and it is also possible to filter on the following statuses:
Warning
Critical
Unknown
Hard
Backlog
Besides the standard Status filters: “Warning, Critical, Unknown”, Hard and Backlog are present.
With “Hard” you can select to only filter on HARD status and discard all SOFT states. This is the default setting when op5 Monitor sends notifications.
Backlog is a little more complicated. This setting can be useful if Tactical overview is displayed on a screen as a NOC-dashboard to monitor the status of hosts and services.
When the Backlog setting is used the widget will display all the problems that have been reported since your last login, even if these problems has been resolved.
To remove a problem when the backlog setting is activated you must either acknowledge the problem, or click the “X” button to remove it form the list.
Note: The backlog setting is global and affects all users
 
In the following example we will choose to display all the critical problems in HARD-state from the servicegroup “Web Services”:
 
1 Click settings button and select a servicegroup:
2 Select the servicegroup you want to monitor with the widget:
3 When you have applied your settings a notification will be displayed in the top right corner showing that the settings are saved.
4 The widget displays the current CRITICAL services for the selected servicegroup.
 
Closing widgets 1
You may close one or more widgets from the Tactical overview.
Just click on the Close widget icon to close the widget completely from the Tactical overview.
Closing widgets 2
Another way to close the widgets from the Tactical overview is to click on the Page settings icon.
And then you just uncheck the widget you want to hide from the list.
Note: The widget will only be visually removed from the Tactical overview. It will not be removed from the software. See Moving widgets on page 41 about how to show the widget again.
Multiple instances
It is possible to create multiple instances of a widgets. This can be useful to display different datasources in widgets, such as status of a servicegroup or critical unacknowledged problems.
To create another instance of a widget: Click the copy button on a widget .
This will create an identical copy of the widget.
 
Moving widgets
You may move around the widgets shown in the Tactical overview as you like.
To move a widget from one section an other
1 Grab, by clicking on the top bar and holding down the mouse button, the widget and move it to the section you like to place it in.
2 When you hover a section where you can drop the widget, a gray area will show where the widget will be placed:
Restoring to factory settings
To restore the Tactical overview to factory (default) settings
1 Click Widget settings icon.
2 Click on the Restore to factory settings button and all widgets will
been placed back to their original places
got their default refresh time set
been made visible again
been expanded.
Create you own widgets
You may build your own widgets but this is not a subject for this user manual.
You can read more about how to build your own widget in the op5 Monitor Administrator manual.