AIOps 2.5 Release Description

AIOps 2. 5 release introduces multiple new features such as event driven email notifications, maintenance window and cooling period for devices, custom ticket thresholds and other enhancements in ticket management and auto-resolution.

Following features are introduced in AIOps 2.5:

Compare Correlation Methods

SmartOps AIOps consists of Hybrid and Similarity Correlation Methods. In this release, AIOps is enabled with the capability of comparing Hybrid and Similarity Correlation in Alert Correlation Policy screen. It helps decide which is the better choice for a customer. Comparison statistics are based on the latest 100 alerts and the current settings.

To view/know more about the feature:

1. Navigate to Alert Correlation Policy screen through AIOps > Configuration > Alert Correlation Policy. This displays the screen as shown.

2. Click on Compare Hybrid and Similarity Correlation button. This displays the Comparison window as shown:

Following are the comparison metrics and corresponding description. 

Event driven email notifications

AIOps 2.5 introduces a generic framework for event-based notification within AIOps. Users will now be able to send email notifications during events such as when ticket is created, cluster is acknowledged by user, etc.

Events for which email notification can be configured

1. When ticket created for alert cluster

2. When ticket created from acknowledgement alert cluster

3. When ticket created manually

4. When an alert cluster is acknowledged by the user

5. When surge ticket is created

To view/know more about the feature:

1. Navigate to Notifications screen through AIOps > Configuration > Notification. This displays the screen as shown.

2. Click on Create Notification link. This displays the  Create Notification window as shown:

3. Enter the parameters as per requirement:

   Field	Description
   Notification Name	Unique name for the notification.
   Share Via	Channel through which the communication is to be triggered. Currently, email is enabled by default.
   Recipient(s)	Email Id of the recipients.
   Event	Select the event for which email is to be triggered.
   Subject	Subject for the email
   Content	Content for the email.

4. Click on Save to save the configurations.

Maintenance Window & Cooling Period

AIOps 2.5 enables the user to define maintenance window for scheduled downtime. Maintenance mode value ('ON' & 'OFF') will not be explicitly set by the user. After the maintenance window ends, a cooling period can be scheduled to define how long the device will require to be back to normal operation.

Cooling window can be set up at the project level and is an optional setting. 

To view/know more about the feature:

1. Maintenance window for devices can be scheduled in bulk using the device inventory (excel) upload.
   For individual devices, navigate to Device Inventory screen through AIOps > Infrastructure. This displays the Device Inventory screen as shown:

2. Click on the required resource to view the device details as shown.

3. Click on Create Maintenance button. This displays the Maintenance Schedule window as shown.
   

4. Configure the parameters as per requirement and click Confirm.

5. To define the cooling period, navigate to Cooling Period screen through AIOps > Configuration > Cooling Period. This displays the screen as shown.

6. Specify the cooling period and click Save.

Device status based on failure and recovery alerts

The failure policy determines if an alert is a failure alert or not. The recovery policy will determine if an alert is a recovery alert or not. Device status will be determined by the absence/presence of failure alerts and matching recovery alerts for a device. In this context, matching refers to an exact match between the node name and alert metric of the failure and recovery alert.

Device status becomes UP when

• All cluster(s) with failure alert(s) for a device is closed via auto closure or user actions or reverse sync (as existing).

• For every open failure alert on the device, a recovery alert with the same alert metric is received with alert created time >= alert created time of the failure alert.

• When there is a single matching recovery alert corresponding to multiple open failure alerts

Device status becomes DOWN when

• On receiving a new failure alert, the device status will be updated to DOWN only when there is no matching recovery alert available with alert created time > = alert created time of the new failure alert

Set up display time zone based on user preference

AIOps 2.5 enables the users to set up their individual preferred time zone and format to be used for time fields displayed on screen. This will be useful for remote AIOps teams working in a different time zone than their customers.

The setting is available on all time fields in these areas:

• Alert/Ticket listing

• Configuration screens

• Automation

• Alert Download

Note: The only exception will be the Grafana based dashboards, which will continue to show the local browser time.

You may specify the time zone as shown.

Customized Ticket Threshold using rules

Ticket Threshold configuration is now customizable using policies and rules. This allows admins to set different thresholds based on alert attributes. For example, admin can set up different thresholds for different types of alerts such as server alert, warning alert originating from same/different source.

To define ticketing threshold using rules,

1. Navigate to AIOps > Configuration > Ticketing Threshold Policy. This displays the Ticketing Threshold Policy screen as shown.

2. Click on Add Policy. This displays the Add Ticketing Threshold screen as shown.

3. Define the Ticketing Threshold Policy as explained below:

To save the policy, click Save Policy.

To add more attributes to the policy, click on the  icon. 

To save and add rule for the policy, click Save and Add Rule. This displays the Set Rules block as shown.

Define the rules for the ticketing threshold policy as explained.

To save the rule and add a new rule, click on Save and Add New Rule.

To activate the rule, enable the Activate Rule option.

Remove restriction on permitting only allowed fields in Ticket Templates

From this release onwards users can use any fields except the not allowed ones in the ticket templates.

Reverse sync of re-opened tickets from ITSM

From this release, when ticket gets re-opened in ITSM, it will be synced back to AIOps. AIOps will change the ticket status to Open and make it available for correlation.

Dashboard widgets for auto resolution analytics

Auto resolution analytics dashboard will now be available in all AIOps Desk & Resolve projects. This can be accessed from Manage Dashboards option.

To view the Auto resolution dashboard,

1. Navigate to AIOps > Dashboard.

2. Select Manage from Dashboard as shown.

3. You may view the dashboard window as shown.