Service Central Overview

The Service Central workspace enables you to manage incidents, information messages, device snapshots, notifications, and error JMBs. Incidents are problem events that are detected in a device and sent to the Service Now application. When an event occurs on a device, AI-Scripts installed on the device create files called Juniper Message Bundles (JMBs) that contain comprehensive information about the device identity, the problem event, and diagnostics. The JMB file is then transferred securely from the device to Service Now. Service Now searches for new incidents and displays the incidents on the Incidents page within Service Central.

The Service Central workspace provides the following three gadgets:

• Incident severities—provides a graphical representation of the incidents generated and their severity.
• Incident priorities—provides a graphical representation of the incidents generated and their severity.
• My Incidents—provides a graphical representation of the incidents created new, flagged to you, or owned and changed by you.

Clicking the bar on the graph takes you to the respective incidents.

Figure 1: Service Central Gadgets

After viewing an incident, you can use the Incidents menu on the Service Now navigation tree to submit a case to the Juniper Support Systems (JSS). You can also notify other users about the incident, assign a user as an owner of the incident, and delete the incident from the device.

In addition to reporting incidents, AI-Scripts also send device information regularly to Service Now in the form of Information Juniper Message Bundles (iJMBs). The iJMBs are then processed and displayed on the Device Snapshots page. You can upload these iJMBs to JSS, where they are processed and analyzed to provide preventive analysis and alerts. You can view the content of these iJMBs and export them to HTML format.

In certain cases, when devices stop sending device information, Service Now generates the iJMBs for all the devices associated to a device group. These iJMBs are generated based on the commands available in directive file pre-loaded in Service Now. The content of these iJMBs is the same as AI-Scripts generated iJMBs. Service Now administrator receives a message when Service Now generates iJMBs automatically for one or more devices.

A JMB is considered erroneous If it dose not comply with the standard data structure that Service Now requires or If it that contains data elements that Service Now does not accept. Service Now identifies these JMBs and displays them on the JMB Errors page from where they can be viewed and downloaded.

You can use a notification policy to specify the events for which you want to receive a notification. The options are New Incident Detected, Case Submitted, Case Status Updated, and Intelligence Update Received. Notification policies define other characteristics (filters) that you can use to fine tune the conditions under which you receive a notification. You can even define the events that trigger the notification, the filters that further specify the trigger events, and the actions that you want Service Now to take after the event is triggered.

Some tasks within the Service Central workspace, such as assigning messages to a connected member and updating an end-customer case, are enabled only when Service Now operates in the end-customer mode. For more information about the Service Now modes, see Service Now Modes.

The Service Central page graphically displays information about the severity and priority of incidents and the incidents you created.

• Assign a user to own and manage incidents, notify users about the incidents, update the status of the incidents, and delete incidents.
• View and delete iJMBs, and export device data to HTML format.
• View devices from which BIOS data is collected and the time BIOS data was collected.
• View devices from which product health data is collected and the product health data files collected from the devices.
• Assign messages to end-customers (enabled if Service Now is operating in the partner-proxy mode.
• Update customer cases (enabled if Service Now is operating in the partner-proxy mode).
• View, download, and delete JMBs with errors.
• View Knowledge Base articles associated with incidents.
• View information about devices that are susceptible to known issues.
• Assign an owner, flag to users, and delete an information message.
• View the JMBs for which Service Now did not create incidents (suppressed events)
• Create, edit, and delete a notification policy.