Use Maximo webservice with JSON content

While the JSON API in newer version of Maximo is quite useful, for many integration scenarios, I still prefer to use the old API infrastructure with Publish Channel and Web Service. However, the native format for this feature is XML.

To send or receive JSON with Publish Channel or Enterprise Service, we can translate the default to JSON format before it goes out / into the system. Below is a simple example to set it up.

Setup standard Publish Channel to send XML message

• Create a new Publish Channel: 

Message Engine doesn't start after setting up cluster

This issue hit me a few times and always took me some time to figure out what happened. So I thought it's a good idea to note it down.

Symptom:

When setting up cluster environment for Maximo, I will need to setup an integration bus with a message engine for each cluster (IF, UI, Cron etc.)

Each message engine will require its own individual schema (and thus individual user if the Oracle DB is used)

After integration bus are setup and Maximo cluster started, we see a lot of errors in the log file, usually in the Cron or MIF cluster due to message engine is not available.

Consider Time Zone with automation script

It took me some time to get to this piece of code, but requirement changed and I needed to ditch it. But I'm sure I'll need to use it at some point in the future, so why not put a note here just in case.

Requirement: 

- A client has many hotels in Sydney and Brisbane which are in two different time zones. Sydney has daylight saving while Brisbane doesn't have. In other words, there is one hour difference for half of the year, and no time difference for the other half.

- Client wants to display a warning message to the user that when he/she raised a service request out of normal working hours (7AM to 7PM), if it's a high priority item, they should make a phone call instead.

Issues with Maximo attachment (DOCLINKS)

 Just a bunch of my own personal notes regarding Maximo attachment (DOCLINKS) function.

•  When a file is attached to a record in Maximo, it creates a record in the DOCLINKS and a record in the DOCINFO table to keep the details of the file. The file is copied to a location on disk, usually on a local folder (e.g. D:\DOCLINKS) or on a network shared folder. The path for Maximo to read the file is kept in the URLNAME field of the DOCINFO table.
• To setup this function, refer to this blog post by Bruno on MaximoDev blog (https://bportaluri.com/2014/06/attachments-doclinks-configuration.html)

• When a user uploads an attachment, the location where Maximo puts the file will depend on the Folder selected:

How to test SMTP with PowerShell for setting up Maximo email notification

In an enterprise IT environment, it is sometimes difficult to setup Maximo to talk with SMTP service due to networking and security restrictions. To troubleshoot SMTP configuration, in the past, we can use Telnet from CMD tool. However, in newer versions of Windows Server, Telnet is often not installed by default. In such cases, we can use PowerShell to test and confirm the SMTP and firewall setting is working before trying to configure SMTP in Maximo.

The first thing I would do is checking whether firewall has been opened so that the port used by SMTP service (e.g. port 25) is reachable from the Maximo server.

Common issues when setting up Maximo with a Load Balancer

Just a couple of my own notes setting up Maximo with a Load Balancer which I learnt through the hard way:

- Property mxe.system.useLoadBalancer – should be set to 1. If not enabled, Maximo thinks the IP address of the Load Balancer’s IP is the client’s and blocks it when the number of requests exceeds a certain threshold (by default is 50 per 3 seconds). 

For more details about the IP blocking function, read this previous post

Messaging engine cannot be started as there is no runtime initialized for it yet

I sometimes have issues with message engine not running. Usually I'll just try to restart the whole system and hope that it goes away.

If it doesn't work, in most cases, it is caused by a corrupted file store used by the message engine and the suggestion from the Internet is to delete these files, which seems to work fine.

Sometimes, with the message engine uses a database store, I had a very similar issue. I find it quite hard to find out the exact root cause. So I chose the easier path by simply deleting the whole message engine, create a new one, giving a new schema name for the data store. This ensures it creates new tables when message engine is initialized the first time. 

Creating a new message engine and re-assigning bus destinations usually take less than 5 minutes, and it seems a lot easier than troubleshooting and finding the root cause of the issue.