xMatters Agent
The xMatters Agent is a service that you install on a local system so you can run Flow Designer steps and process Integration Builder scripts behind your company firewall. This means systems behind your firewall can trigger alerts in xMatters and provide information to enrich the alert, and steps and integrations can access your company's local network resources, enabling them to interact with the file system or communicate with systems that cannot be accessed externally.
When a Flow Designer step is configured to run on the xMatters Agent, it can go through the agent to update or get information from internal systems (for example, populating a service desk ticket with information or request user information from a system behind the firewall).
The xMatters Agent also supports processing for both inbound and outbound integrations. Inbound integrations can be triggered by requests from applications behind your company firewall. When an outbound integration is triggered, it can go through the xMatters Agent to update internal systems, for example, by assigning a service desk ticket to the recipient who responds to a notification, closing a ticket when an alert is terminated, or by creating a log of xMatters alerts on the local file system.
If your step or integration does not need to be triggered from or access resources located behind your company firewall, you do not need to install an xMatters Agent.
The xMatters Agent is designed to replace the Integration Agent with management and integration capabilities that are easier to use. Both the xMatters Agent and the Integration Agent can update systems that are located behind a firewall, and we encourage you to use the xMatters Agent for new integrations. However in certain circumstances, you might still need to use the Integration Agent, which supports a few bits of functionality that we're still working on adding to the xMatters Agent.
Getting started with the xMatters Agent
To get started with the xMatters Agent, first install it on a system behind your company firewall, ensure that it connects to xMatters, and then configure outbound integrations to run on the agent. The customized outbound integration scripts can then access network resources that are located behind your company firewall.
You will need to perform the following steps:
- Check system requirements. Before installing the xMatters Agent, verify that your system meets the minimum requirements.
- See System requirements for more information about the supported systems and their requirements.
- Download and install the xMatters Agent. Install the xMatters Agent from the web user interface.
- See Download and Install the xMatters Agent for information about installing the xMatters Agent.
- Verify that the xMatters Agent is connected. Once the xMatters Agent is installed, verify that it can connect to xMatters, and give it a name so you can easily identify it.
- See View and Manage xMatters Agents for more information about viewing and naming agents.
- See Monitor and troubleshoot the xMatters Agent if you have trouble connecting the agent to xMatters.
- Configure steps and inbound or outbound integrations to run on the agent.
- See Design custom steps for information on configuring a custom step to allow it to run on an agent and Design a flow for information on setting the run location for a step on the canvas.
- See Inbound integrations and Outbound integrations for more information about configuring integrations to run on an agent.
How the xMatters Agent works
The xMatters Agent processes steps and integrations the same way they are processed in the xMatters cloud, with the key difference being that the xMatters Agent is installed behind your company firewall and can use local resources that are not accessible from the xMatters cloud. The xMatters Agent queues integration jobs and then processes them in order. You can configure multiple xMatters Agents to distribute processing or to co-locate them with the services they need to access.
Use the monitoring endpoints to view the status of an agent, including how many jobs are queued on any particular agent. For more information about using the monitoring endpoints, see Monitor and troubleshoot the xMatters Agent.