Business Activity Monitoring

The XMBusiness ActivityA specific step in a process.  It will be the user interface for that step (web form or a screen), for example, the Leave Application (screen interface or web form) will be the first Activity in the Leave Requisition process.  The Leave Application Authorization will be the second step or Activity in the Leave Requisition process.  One Process can have multiple activities. Monitor is primarily a service which can perform time-based jobs. It has a Controller/Mediator and a Database to store its data. It communicates to XMWorkspace using an XMPro API while the XMWorkspace and any third-party can communicate to an XMBusiness Activity Monitor using the WCF Service exposed by it. It has a default UI which is an ASP application and uses the same WCF Service to communicate.

Job

A job is a combination of following

1. Schedule
2. Trigger
3. Action(s)

Schedule

A Schedule defines the timing of the Trigger to be evaluated at. It is defined by the end-user through UI at the time of configuring a job. Currently, it provides following Recursive scheduling options:
XMBusiness Activity Monitor Controller continually evaluates each job’s next Time to Occur. If the Time to Occur is current it creates a Thread and assigns it the relevant Trigger.

Trigger

A trigger physically exists in a folder which XMBusiness Activity Monitor has access to, specified in the config file. It is a DLL extended from a generic DLL (XMMonitor.dll) provided with some built-in functions, for example, checking for new Tasks, etc.

A trigger’s primary responsibility is to Evaluate if the Job needs to be executed or not. A trigger may get data passed in as static parameters at the time of configuration.

If the trigger evaluates to true it calls the current job’s associated Action(s). The outcome of Job is logged to database at the end of execution of all Actions.

Action

An action physically exists in a folder which XMBusiness Activity Monitor has access to, specified in the config file. It is a DLL extended from a generic DLL (XMMonitor.dll) provided with some built-in functions, for example, creating a Task, Sending an email, creating an XMPro User, etc.

Users can create a custom Action which will have access to all standard functions which can be mixed and matched for individual requirements.

Every Action has a set of inputs and outputs in a form of Named Value Pairs which in case of Sequenced Actions are passed from one Action to another.

XMPro Specific Actions

User, Business Groups

Process Specific

Sample Jobs

Examples

Trigger

public class FindNewUsers : ITrigger
{
private string WorkspaceUrl;
private string WorkspaceUserName;
private string WorkspacePassword;

#region ITrigger Members

public Dictionary<string, object> GetContextTemplate()
{
Dictionary<string, object> context = new Dictionary<string, object>();
context.Add("Server.Url" , String.Empty);
context.Add("Server.User Name" , String.Empty);
context.Add("Server.Password" , String.Empty);
return context;
}

private void ParseContext(Dictionary<string, object> data)
{
this.WorkspaceUrl = data["Server.Url"] as String;
this.WorkspaceUserName = data["Server.User Name"] as String;
this.WorkspacePassword = data["Server.Password"] as String;
}

public bool Evaluate(ref Dictionary<string, object> data)
{
this.ParseContext(data);
DataTable newUsers = new DataTable("User");
newUsers.Columns.Add("User Name");
newUsers.Columns.Add("First Name");
newUsers.Columns.Add("Last Name");
newUsers.Columns.Add("Tel Work");
newUsers.Columns.Add("Tel Cell");
newUsers.Columns.Add("Email");
newUsers.Columns.Add("Role Description");
 
//The following loop is querying your system to find any new users that you wish to create within XMPro.
//It is left in this code base to illustrate how a new row is added to the data table to be passed to the Action.
foreach (PersonDetailsPerson User in this.getUsers())
{
}
 
data.Add("User", newUsers);
return newUsers.Rows.Count > 0;
}

private IEnumerable<PersonDetailsPerson> getUsers()
{
return GetMembersOfGroup();
}

#endregion
}

Action

public class FileWriter : IAction
{
private string _Name = "FileWriter";
private string OutputDirectory;
private string ObjectName;

public string DataFile
{
get
{
return this._Name + "Output.txt";
}
}

#region IAction Members

public Dictionary<string, object> GetContextTemplate()
{
Dictionary<string, object> context = new Dictionary<string, object>();
context.Add(this._Name + ".OutputDirectory", "");//File system path to write the file at.
context.Add(this._Name + ".ObjectName", "");//the specific object in Dictionary to be used for output, if not specified all will be written.
return context;
}

private void ParseContext(Dictionary<string, object> data)
{
this.OutputDirectory = data[this._Name + ".OutputDirectory"] as String;
this.ObjectName = data[this._Name + ".ObjectName"] as String;
}

public string Perform(ref Dictionary<string, object> data)
{
this.ParseContext(data);

foreach (var obj in data.Keys)
{
if (obj == this.ObjectName || String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(this.ObjectName))
{
if (data[obj] != null)
{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.AppendLine(obj);
sb.AppendLine(DateTime.Now.ToString());
sb.AppendLine("------------------------------------------");
sb.AppendLine(this.SerializeObject(data[obj]));
sb.AppendLine();
File.AppendAllText(Path.Combine(this.OutputDirectory, this.DataFile), sb.ToString());
}
}
}

return "Action Performed.";
}

#endregion

private string SerializeObject(object toSerialize)
{
XmlSerializer xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer(toSerialize.GetType());

using (StringWriter textWriter = new StringWriter())
{
xmlSerializer.Serialize(textWriter, toSerialize);
return textWriter.ToString();
}
}

}