Add a Monitor

How to Add a Monitor

Monitors can be added to a snapshot of a business model to provide on-going review of the model’s holistic performance and adherence to KPI’s.

1. First, make sure the monitor you want to associate with a business model is imported into ModelOp Center and a snapshot has been created. The monitors list can be accessed by first clicking on the “Inventory” main menu item and then selecting “Monitors” from the drop down menu. The monitors will be listed like below:

Open

2. Next, navigate to the specific Implementation (business model) from the above drop down menu for which you want to apply a monitor

3. Select the desired snapshot for your business model

4. In the Model Snapshot page, click on the “Monitoring” tab. Click the “Add Monitor” button.

Open

5. Choose Monitor. The monitoring wizard is opened, which walks a user through adding a monitor to a business model. First, select the specific monitoring model that the user would like to add:

4. Monitor Version. Next, select the specific Snapshot (version) of the monitoring model to be used. As background, ModelOp Center versions and manages monitoring models in the same was as business models, allowing for reusability and auditability of monitors as well.

5. Inputs Assets. Add input assets for the monitoring model to consume. Input assets can be URLs to S3 or HDFS files, SQL assets, REST assets, directly uploaded files, or assets that are already included in the business model. See more details on these assets here.

6. Thresholds. Optionally, thresholds can be added to the Monitor though the use of a decision table (DMN file). When the monitoring job is run, the DMN file will be examined by an MLC to determine whether the business model is outside of specification and an alert notification should be sent. The user can select an existing DMN or choose to generate a new set of thresholds.

If the user selects to generate a DMN threshold file they can use the DMN builder to construct one:

If the user selects a DMN from the existing business model, they also have the option to 'edit' the file.

This will open the DMN builder with the selected file as a base. Any modifications done to this file through the DMN builder will not alter the original and only be saved to the monitor:

7. Schedule. Optionally, one or more schedules can be set to launch monitoring jobs automatically. In the screenshot below, select the Signal Type from the dropdown menu based on your ticketing system (Jira, ServiceNow). Lastly, set the frequency of the monitoring job. This can be done either by the wizard or by entering a cron expression. Note: schedules are optional; a monitor may be run on-demand from the business model’s snapshot page, or by a curl command. These schedules can fire a signal to trigger an MLC to create a monitoring metrics job. Additionally, ModelOp Center supports enterprise schedulers such as Control-M, AutoSys and SSIS via API calls.

8. Parameters. If a schedule is added to the Monitor, then input parameters can be passed into the Monitoring Job.

9. Review. Review the details of the monitor, and if satisfied, click Save.

10. The monitor will appear under the Configured Monitors section of the business model’s snapshot page.

From here, the monitor can be edited, as required, via the same Monitor Wizard.

Using Dynamic Parameters for Monitoring Setup

For obtaining data from certain data systems (like SQL or REST-based systems), it can be useful to specify parameters that are dynamically set during monitoring execution. The most common example would be for setting time windows, e.g. “obtain all data over the last week.” The below approach outlines how to set up a Monitor to use parameters such as current day, current week, etc. Please note that a user can customize the specific parameter values within a Model Life Cycle.

Example Steps to Use Parameters for Monitoring

1. From the assets tab of a Business Model wizard, click to add an asset and choose the appropriate asset (REST, SQL or URL)

   1. If using Rest Asset, within the resulting add asset configuration, the user can add placeholder logic (using standard ${FOO} notation) to the Query Params or Form Data values.

   2. If using SQL Asset, within the resulting add asset configuration, the user can add placeholder logic (using standard ${FOO} notation) to the SQL Parameters
      
      

   3. If adding asset by URL, within the resulting add asset configuration, the user can add placeholder logic (using $(FOO) notation) to the URL. Please notice the use of parentheses in this case, instead of the brackets like in the other cases.

2. Next the user will create a monitor using that asset, and select the newly created Asset (REST, SQL or URL) as input for the job

3. In the Schedule step of the Wizard, the user will add signal variables that match the placeholder name used in the Asset params (e.g. FOO above). Note that you can pass the optional variable ASSET_REPLACE_FORMAT to specify a date format for the replacement, otherwise default is “yyyy-MM-dd”).
   
   

    

4. NOTE: In the RunAssociatedModelMetrics.bpmn (both Jira and Service Now), there is a script to replace the placeholders of all the Assets that reference a variable using the notation above ${FOO}. By default, the value of such variables will be one of the following pre-loaded instance variables as listed below. However, these can be customized within the bpmn if the user would like to add other variables.

   1. ${QUARTER_START}

   2. ${QUARTER_END}

   3. ${MONTH_START}

   4. ${MONTH_END}

   5. ${WEEK_START}

   6. ${WEEK_END}

   7. ${DAYS_AGO_30}

   8. ${TODAY} or alias ${CURRENT_DAY}

   9. ${MONTH} using month name full word.

5. Make any final updates/changes to the monitor and click to save the monitor

6. If desired, click the play button to run the monitor

7. When the monitor runs, the ModelOp engine will make the call to the REST, SQL or URL data system using with the replaced value. Note here that the last request of the image shows the actual Today and Quarter End dates passed and gets the desired dynamic response.

Next Article: Run a Monitor >