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Instruction History

Checking the instruction history in 1E ITSM Connect. The 1E ITSM Connect app allows an ITIL user in ServiceNow to investigate and remediate issues faced users on their devices. This can be done by running appropriate Tachyon instructions from the incident form in the ITSM module of ServiceNow. 1E ITSM Connect keeps a history of instructions executed by any user, which includes:

  • Instructions run from 1E ITSM Connect

  • Parameters passed to a Tachyon instruction

  • Responses received from a Tachyon instruction.

1E ITSM Connect also has a purging mechanism to clean up the Instruction History.

Viewing the Instruction History

There are 3 ways an 1E ITSM Connect user or admin can view the Tachyon instruction history:

  1. Viewing the details for all the instructions run in 1E ITSM Connect on the 1E ITSM Connect→Instruction History page.

  2. Viewing the Instructions that have been run for a specific incident from the incident page via the Instruction History link in the Related link section.

  3. Viewing the details for the instructions where an approval request has been made on the 1E ITSM Connect→Tachyon Approvals page.

1E ITSM Connect App roles required to view the Instruction History

To access the Instruction History Page a ServiceNow user must have either of the following roles.

  • x_1e_connect.Tachyon_Admin

  • x_1e_connect.Tachyon_User

Viewing the details for all the instructions run in 1E ITSM Connect

To view details for all instructions that have been run in the 1E ITSM Connect app:

  1. Login to ServiceNow.

  2. Navigate to 1E ITSM Connect→Instruction History.

  3. The list of run instructions are displayed in the right-hand pane.

  4. To view the details for a particular instruction click on the instruction id link in the Number column. Doing this displays the Triggered Instruction page for the selected instruction, as described in The Triggered Instruction page heading.

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Viewing instructions that have been run for a specific incident

  1. Login to ServiceNow.

  2. Navigate to 1E ITSM Connect→Incidents.

  3. Open an incident by clicking on the incident number link in the Number column.

  4. Go to related link section and click on Instruction History link. Doing this displays the Instruction History page, as described in the Viewing the details for all the instructions run in the 1E ITSM Connect heading, but with the instructions filtered to ones run from the selected incident.

Note

The instruction history page will be opened in a new browser tab. This page will display all the run instructions associated with the selected incident. The Related link section is only visible to users with the roles specified in 1E ITSM Connect App roles required to view the Instruction History.

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Viewing the details for the instructions where an approval request has been made

  1. Login to ServiceNow with a ServiceNow user who has x_1e_connect.Tachyon_Approver role.

  2. Navigate to the 1E ITSM Connect→Tachyon Approvals page.

  3. Click on the instruction Id (TRINXXXXXXX) link in the Approval for column to see the history for the selected instruction.

  4. To view the details for an instruction click on the instruction id link in the Approval for column. Doing this displays the Triggered Instruction page for the selected instruction, as described in The Triggered Instruction page heading.

Note

Users will only be able to see the Tachyon instructions where an approval request has been generated.

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The Triggered Instruction page

The Triggered Instruction page displays the following information.

Field Name

Description

Number

A unique number assigned to every triggered instruction record.

Instruction Name

The name of the instruction executed.

Instruction Parameters

This field contains JSON of parameters with value which we passed to Tachyon for this triggered instruction.

Target Endpoint

The CI hostname from the incident, refers to the device name for the endpoint where Tachyon server will execute the instruction.

Task

The incident number where this Tachyon instruction was executed.

Status

The instruction status as reported by Tachyon, such as completed, error, awaiting approval etc.

Instruction Execution ID

A Unique Id for the instruction that is returned by Tachyon when it is run.

Last Response TimeStamp

The time stamp for the last response from Tachyon related to this instruction.

User

The ServiceNow user name that selected to run this instruction.

View Response Button

Clicking this button displays the responses returned by Tachyon for this instruction. This button is only displayed when there are responses for this instruction and the responses have not been purged.

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Purging the Instruction History (using Scheduled Jobs)

For every Tachyon instruction run from the 1E ITSM Connect app, a history of the run instruction and its responses are saved in ServiceNow. To delete older triggered instructions and their responses, a purging mechanism is provided.

There are two types of job that are automatically created by 1E ITSM Connect.

  1. Purge responses.

  2. Purge run instruction history.

Both these jobs execute on a daily basis at midnight.

To view these jobs, login to ServiceNow with Global Administrator credentials and navigate to 1E ITSM Connect→Administration→Scheduled Jobs.

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You can configure at what time each job should run. Jobs can also be executed on demand by clicking on the Execute Now button on the jobs detail form. Below is a brief description of the 1E ITSM Connect app jobs.

  1. Tachyon-Delete Instruction Responses Job:

    This job purges the responses of a triggered instruction. When it runs:

    1. It uses the value of the Instruction response keep days property from app settings page.

    2. It compares the value of the Last Response TimeStamp for a run instruction with this value.

    3. If the last response time stamp is older than these many days then this job deletes all the responses of this triggered instruction from x_1e_connect_instruction_response_list table of ServiceNow and the status of triggered instruction is updated to Purged.

    So in short, this job deletes the responses of a triggered instruction record.

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  2. Tachyon-Delete Triggered Instructions Job:

    This job purges the triggered instruction records. When this job runs:

    1. it uses the value of the Instruction history keep months property from the app settings page.

    2. it compares the value of the Created at time for the triggered instruction with this value.

    3. If the Created at time stamp is older than theInstruction history keep months then this job deletes all these triggered instructions.

    4. It also deletes responses from x_1e_connect_instruction_response_list table if any response is not associated with a triggered instruction record.

    So in short, this job deletes all the older triggered instruction records.

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