BMC Control-M

The built-in BMC Control-M Job Status trigger initiates a flow when it receives a signal from the xMatters BMC Control-M plugin, either before or after a parent job executes. Outputs include information about the parent job.

  1. Go to the Triggers tab in the palette, expand the App Triggers section and drag the trigger onto the canvas.
  2. Double-click the trigger (or click the pencil icon).
  3. Set the authenticating user. Alternatively, you can create an integration user to use as the authenticating user.

  4. Copy the URL — you'll use this when you modify the connection profile file.
  5. Click the Flood Control tab to edit the trigger's default flood control settings. For more information about these settings, see Trigger Flood Control.
  6. Click Done.
  7. On the flow canvas, connect the steps you want to run when xMatters receives a request to that URL.

You're now ready to configure BMC Control-M to target the trigger.

Configure BMC Control-M to send requests to the trigger URL

Before you can use BMC Control-M with either the trigger or steps, you must modify the configuration files and deploy the BMC Control-M plugin file.

To begin configuring the BMC Control-M plug in, download the following files to an easy-to-find location on your computer.

The following sample files contain the variable declarations required for the plug-in and are referenced in the deployment instructions. We recommend using these files as the basis for your own job files or to test the deployment of your configuration.

Now that you have the configuration files on your system, let's configure them with the appropriate settings.

  1. Go to the location of the xMattersConnectionProfile.json file.
  2. Open the file in a text editor program.
  3. Replace the placeholder text for each variable with valid values for your BMC Control-M instance.
    Variable NameDescription
    AI-triggerURLThe webhook URL you copied from the Control-M trigger in Flow Designer.
    AI-usernameUsername of the authenticating user.
    AI-passwordPassword of the authenticating user.
    AI-ctmHostThe specific Control-M host name.
    AI-ctmServerNameThe specific Control-M server instance name.
    AI-ctmServerNameName of the Control-M server instance.
    AI-ctmApiTokenAPI token used as the x-api-key header on every Control-M request.
  4. Save your changes.
  5. Open the xmCustomersJobSample.json in a text editor program.
  6. Replace the placeholder values for RunAs and Host with valid values for your system.
  7. Save your changes.
  8. Repeat steps 5 - 7 for the xmattersJobSample.json file.

Now that the configuration files are ready, lets deploy them in BMC Control-M. The following instructions require access to the BMC Control-M Automation API , and Command Line Interface. If you require instructions on the Automation API or Command Line interface, see the BMC Control-M documentation.

  1. On the Workbench welcome page, open the Application Integrator.
  2. Go to Get Started > Import.
  3. Select the xMatters_plugin.ctmai plugin file from its location on your computer and click Open. The plug-in automatically opens in a new tab.
  4. Click Publish & Deploy.
  5. On the Publish & Deploy panel, select which agent to deploy the plug-in to. You can deploy the plug-in to multiple agents, if required.
  6. Click Apply.

    7. BMC Control-M displays a Publish & Deploy status modal that shows you the progress of the plug-in deployement. When deployment is complete, click Close.

  7. Open the Command Line Interface.
  8. Deploy the configuration files using the following commands: 
    • ctm deploy xmattersConnectionProfile.json
    • ctm deploy xmattersJobSample.json
    • ctm deploy xmCustomersJobSample.json

    9. If the deployment is successful, you will see an output similar to the following for the Connection Profile:

    [

    {

    "deploymentFile": "xmattersConnectionProfile.json",

    "deploymentState": "DEPLOYED_CONNECTION_PROFILES",

    "deploymentStatus": "ENDED_OK",

    "successfulFoldersCount": 0,

    "successfulSmartFoldersCount": 0,

    "successfulSubFoldersCount": 0,

    "successfulJobsCount": 0,

    "successfulConnectionProfilesCount": 1,

    "successfulDriversCount": 0,

    "isDeployDescriptorValid": false,

    "deployedConnectionProfiles": [

    "XMATTERS_CONNECTION_PROFILE"

    ]

    }

    ]

    Now let's run a job using the job sample file to verify the connection between BMC Control-M and xMatters.

  9. In the Command Line Interface, run the following command: ctm run xmCustomersJobSample.json

Once the configuration and deployment are complete, you can create your own job files, or modify the sample files to run jobs.

Outputs

The BMC Control-M Incidents trigger has the following outputs you can use as inputs to steps further along the flow.

Label

 Description
Application User-defined application of the job.
Cyclic Whether the job executes at defined cyclic intervals.
Description Description of the job.
End Time Timestamp of when the job run finished in BMC Control-M.
Estimated End Time Estimated time when the job is expected to finish running.
Estimated Start Time Estimated time when the job is expected to begin running.
Execution Time Zone Time zone where the job was executed.
Job Type Type of job.
Number of Runs Number of times the job has run.
Parent Folder Folder in BMC Control-M where the job resides.
Ran As Username of the user that is authorized to execute the job.
Rerun Every Amount of time to wait between job reruns or cyclic executions.
Run Date Date that the job ran.
Run ID Unique ID of the BMC Control-M job run.
Run Where Agent host ID and host group where the job executes.
Start Time Timestamp of when the job run began in BMC Control-M.
Status Status of the job in BMC Control-M.
Sub Application User-defined sub-application of the job.
Submission Window A specified period of time when the job can execute.
Waiting Info Reasons why the job did not run.