Before the phone rings, Darrel already knows what the caller will say. He knows its Angela from the Dallas office. She’s always the one who calls in to complain when something breaks in the Dallas office. But today, he’s ready. Before Angela can start venting, Darrel stops her with “Your kiosk is back in operation. It’s already been rebooted.”  She can’t believe it. “How… how did you know?” Darrel leans back in his chair, grins and says “psychic super powers” and mentally closes out a trouble ticket.

What is Monitor?Monitor proactively watches functions and kiosks, alerting IT and operations staff when there is a problem.

The answer, the secret new power for IT and operations staff is Monitor: the alert interface for AgilQuest OnBoard.

The kiosks where employees select workspaces and check in are typically spread all over the facility, campus or throughout the world. They all tie back into the OnBoard database and all the reservations, but because they are so spread out, it takes a lot of time and effort to physically visit them to diagnose and resolve problems.

When someone on the 32nd floor disconnects the network cable, when a hard drive fails in the Chicago office kiosk, or when the operating system locks up in the executive floor, it falls to IT to start a trouble ticket, rush out to determine the problem, and fix it as quickly as possible. That could mean walking up stairs, driving halfway across town, or asking a receptionist in a different time zone “is the blue CAT5 cable pulled out of the wall again?”

During that time, users are complaining that “the system is down” and IT staff has to physically travel to the location. Check ins, reservations and floor plans are important, but maintaining a large, geographically dispersed system can be time-consuming. So, we’ve built a tool to help IT and the users know instantly when there is a problem and point out specifically where the problem originates.

An important option in the new version 5 of OnBoard is called Monitor and it watches various parts of the OnBoard and Commander products for problems. When a kiosk gets accidentally unplugged by the cleaning staff, when a CRON job doesn’t start on time, or when the JMS queue misbehaves, Monitor notices and creates an alert. IT staff now has one place, the Monitor Alert Dashboard, where the overall health of the system is displayed and any alerts are listed clearly. These alerts show where the problem is happening and what the problem is. Email notifications bring these alerts right to the on-call IT person, on their PC or phone.

What does Monitor do?

• Watches various pieces of the system constantly
• Reports the system health on Alerts console
• Alerts the admin before users can complain

Customer Value

• Maximizes uptime
• Lets I.T. to get in front of problems
• Reduces IT time and effort
• Reduces user complaints

So, the next time a problem occurs, your IT person will already know about it and have time to fix it before the users have a chance to call in a complaint. When the users say “Wow! How did you know,” you get to choose between “psychic super powers” or “we upgraded and added Monitor”. They’ll still think you’re amazing.

Learn more about Monitor or talk to your account manager about adding Monitor to your OnBoard installation.

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