We want to automate user creation in xmatters. To be more specific, we have an in-house application that stores users information ( user id, name, email id etc) and daily we get some new users registered in that application.
We want all those users to be created in xMatters as a “standard user”, they will just create subscriptions.
How can I automate "upload of user feed" from our inhouse application to xMatters, we want it run every day or may be every hour?
I was exploring xmatter admin document and found that we have “Import Data” and “User upload” features provided for company admin user and they do import users in xmatters, but we do not want to do it manually every day from GUI by login in as admin.
Is there any way to automate this user upload in xmatters from backend utility?
I read about data synchronization utility, can it be used for this purpose?
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Hey Gourav!
Welcome to the world of Data Syncs! First question, are you using our xMatters On Demand product or do you have an On Premise installation? Depending on which, will determine what the options are.
I'll assume you are using xMod for now. Probably your best bet is the ExPort Import Controller (EPIC) download here, and docs here. You will want to check out the sections for "ZipSync". Basically, you get the data out of your in-house application and into some specially formatted .csv files and zip them up. Then EPIC will upload the file (over HTTPS and the files are never held in the file system) and perform the necessary inserts and updates.
If you are feeling more adventurous we have a full suite of SOAP web services, doc'd here. If your data warehouse application has support for making SOAP web service calls, this might be an option as it cuts out the zip file.
To your point about the Import Data and User upload, yes, those are manual processes and at one point they would not do any updates. I haven't played with that in a while so it might be different now.
I hope that helps! Hit me back if you have further questions!
Happy Friday!
--- Travis
Thanks Travis for your valuable suggestions. I am new to xMatters, but what I figured out from exploring xMatters site and docs is that our installation is an On-Premise one, since we are not using xMatters cloud services ( I hope that is called xMatters on demand).
We have our full xMatters installations at our own Linux server, where we have full control to stop and start all engines and nodes . It looks like EPIC is made specifically for xMatters on demand product. Is that can be used with on premise installation?
We would like to use web service to manage the auto user import, I hope SOAP web service solution is independent of the xMatters installation type and may be more easy to manage and customize for on-premise solution.
Do you think there is alternate way to accomplish this? I found that there is data sync utility which can also be used for the same purpose. I would like to know if its possible with data sync too?
Please correct me if my understanding so far about xMatters is incorrect.
Thanks,
DELETEME
Hello again Gourav,
Yep, since you have it installed on your server sounds like you have an on premise installation. So that changes things, but you still have several options. The first thing we need to do is track down your version. Crack open the xMHOME/logs/AlarmPoint.txt file and check out the first line. Post here and I can help you sort it out.
As you mentioned, there is a data sync utility and you can find all the documentation for it in the install/admin guide for your version. This exposes a set of easily workable "staging" tables in the xMatters database. You populate these tables directly with the necessary information and then run the data sync. This utility then extracts the data out of the staging tables and into the runtime tables. The runtime tables are rather messy and are optimized for speed rather than human readablilty. So this utility makes things much easier.
We do have a whole suite of SOAP Web Services nice and doc'd up here
If you are familiar and comfortable with SOAP web services, I encourage you go that route. If you keep up with the latest versions of xM on premise, then if/when you guys decide to move to the on demand product, you should have very little changes to make to this data sync. Conversely, since we don't expose the database in the xM on demand product, if you went with the data sync, you'd have to re-evaluate and re-implement your user creation process... and probably end up going with SOAP any way :)