Robot Console

Automatic Message Management, Resource Monitoring, and Log Monitoring for IBM i

Almost every important event that occurs on your IBM i (iSeries, AS/400) is preceded or followed by a message. But, when your IBM i sends a message, who sees it? If a resource becomes unavailable, how long does it take before anyone notices? If someone changes a security value or makes an FTP request, is there a way to check who did it?

Someone must monitor for these messages and react to them quickly and accurately. But your operator has other duties besides monitoring messages. So, messages get missed, servers stay down, and unauthorized FTP requests can go unnoticed.

To make the most of your IBM i, don’t make it wait for someone to notice that it needs help. Robot Console sorts through incoming messages, monitors resources and system logs, and notifies an operator only when it can’t handle a situation.

Handle IBM i Messages Automatically

Robot Console is a fully automated, customizable tool that sends you only the IBM i messages you need to see. Did a routine process complete on time? Great—but you don’t need to see that message. Robot Console ignores it and waits for the truly important stuff—like runaway jobs, dwindling resources, IPL risk, and more—before alerting you. This makes your monitoring more effective—you won’t miss crucial information—and more efficient.

For browser-based or mobile access, use Fortra Insite (included with your Robot Console license) to display message details, monitoring summaries, and resource statuses side by side on a single screen. Color-coding makes it easy to spot failed resources or critical messages at a glance and respond to the message without ever touching a green screen.

Smart, Flexible Message Response

When your system gets an important message, Robot Console has the intelligence to deal with it automatically, whether it needs to be suppressed from the operations staff, forwarded to an expert, or replied to automatically. If you have a complex process, OPAL, the built-in scripting language designed with operators in mind, allows you to easily create sophisticated procedures that check the message variables with decision-tree processing. If you aren’t ready to define your procedures, that’s okay—Robot Console is ready out of the box to handle any environment.

OPAL gives you the power to automate even the most complex situations. You can set it up to automatically check the contents of messages and decide which actions to take, including executing commands, calling programs, starting or canceling jobs, calling an expert for help, or a combination of options.

Monitor IBM i Resources Proactively

The days of writing and maintaining your own monitoring programs are over. With Robot Console, you don’t need to worry if a line, device, TCP/IP server, job queue, job, or subsystem becomes unavailable. It checks them at regular intervals and, if there’s a problem, automatically executes a procedure or notifies an expert. You can keep an eye out for damaged data queues and monitor IBM MQ channels, managers, and queues, as well as any writer for various statuses.

Monitor Application Logs in the IFS

As more applications on IBM i become Java-based or web-based, they are less likely to send their important messages to a message queue such as QSYSOPR. Robot Console can monitor business-critical applications that put their important messages into log files located in the IFS. You define which directories or files to monitor and which events you want to receive notifications for.

Watch System Logs Effortlessly

Robot Console also monitors system logs to help you manage FTP requests, the security audit journal (QAUDJRN), and the system history log (QHST). You can see at a glance who requested an FTP transaction, who modified a system value, the number of objects not saved in the last backup, and more.

Leverage Mobile Message Management

A message in hand is worth two stuck on the system. Working in tandem with Robot Alert, Robot Console lets you respond to messages via email on your preferred mobile devices. Need more details before you respond? You can open Robot Console in your preferred web browser and troubleshoot from that same device. If you’re unavailable, Robot Console can send the message to another expert. Its automatic process for message notification keeps you and your crucial messages on track.

Get Multi-Partition (VM) Control

Maintain a consistent approach to messages across your network. Partnering with Robot Network, Robot Console centralizes message and resource management across your IBM i network. That means no duplication of effort on each partition; you set up rules once and distribute to each of the other partitions. For even more flexibility, you can escalate via email, text, SNMP, or call a user program from the central Robot Network host system.