Overview of the WebSphere Business Monitor sample gadgets

With this gadget, the user can browse through his alert messages which are ordered from the most recent to the least recent. The gadget also allows the users to sort the alerts using other criteria such as the subject or status. This gadget only displays alerts that are of the type Dashboard. The following figure shows an example of the Alerts Notification gadget.

Figure 1. The Alerts Notification gadget showing a list of alerts

The most basic action that you can do to an alert is to read its contents. This is done by double-clicking on the alert and the details appear in a separate window. The following figure shows an example the details for an alert. Unread alerts are displayed in back with a black dot to the left of the alert. When read, the alert automatically turns to gray and the dot is removed as can be seen in the following figure.

Figure 2. Showing the details of an alert

You can revert the status of a read alert to unread by choosing the alert from the list and clicking Mark Unread. You can also delete an alert from the list or forwarded the alert to another user with the Forward button. The following figure shows multiple alerts being forwarded to another user. That user sees these forwarded alerts the next time the alerts list is viewed.

Figure 3. Forwarding alerts to another user

The Alerts Notification gadget refreshes the list periodically so you can be notified about any new alerts. Finally, you can modify the settings for your alert subscriptions by using the Alert Subscriptions button. The following figure shows the current alert subscription settings for a user. For each type of alert, you can choose your preferred methods for receiving the notifications. The example below shows one alert type to which a user subscribes. Had there been a number of them, they are all listed, separated by a horizontal line, so that the user can choose the notification methods for each alert type.

Figure 4. Updating the user's subscription options for alerts.

In the figure below, the white line indicates the target value that is acceptable for this KPI while the black arrow indicates the actual value. In this example, the user can see at a glance that the average credit check duration is above the target value.

Figure 5. A KPI Subscriber gadget that shows the average duration of a credit check task

The gadget can be configured to refresh periodically. A refresh involves retrieving the current value of the KPI from the Business Monitor server using REST APIs and then repainting the graph.

The gadget has an Options panel so you can specify which Business Monitor server to connect, which KPI from which monitor model to watch, as well as the refresh interval. If the Business Monitor server is a secured, you will be prompted for you user ID and password. Finally, you can open several instances of the KPI Subscriber gadget so that you can track multiple KPIs simultaneously from your desktop.

Figure 6. An Options panel allows the user to choose which KPI to watch