Managing Electronic Service Agent

Managing Electronic Service Agent™ consists of updating configuration information, displaying Electronic Service Agent activities, checking connection and access to IBM, and stopping Electronic Service Agent.

Authorizing users to view service information

You can authorize users to view service information that was sent to IBM. After authorization, service information can be viewed on the IBM Electronic Services Link outside Information Center Web site.

Registering a new IBM ID

To register for a new IBM ID, go to My IBM profile Link outside Information Center

Web site and click Register.

Important: The first IBM ID that is sent to IBM from Electronic Service Agent becomes the administrator. The administrator has the only IBM ID that has the authority to manage IBM IDs using the IBM Electronic Services Web site functions.

Providing IBM IDs

For security and privacy reasons, it is necessary that an IBM ID be associated with a specific system. Only the specified IDs can view the service information for that system. Up to 2 IBM IDs can be entered per request. To add additional IDs, see the information under Managing IBM IDs. Authorizing users to view service information can be done using the Electronic Service Agent menu or the graphic user interface.

To authorize users to view service information using Electronic Service Agent, select option 3 (Authorize users to access service information) from the Electronic Service Agent main menu.

Managing IBM IDs

To manage your IBM IDs, which includes associating new IBM IDs with a system or removing existing IBM IDs, go to the IBM Electronic Services Link outside Information Center Web site and click Services administration from the navigation pane on the left.

Configuring Electronic Service Agent

To configure Electronic Service Agent values such as operational settings, follow these steps:

On a command line, enter GO SERVICE.
Select option 1 (Change Service Agent attributes) from the Electronic Service Agent main menu.

Displaying Electronic Service Agent activities

You can use Electronic Service Agent to view problem reporting activities, service information collection activities, and the audit logs.

Problem reporting activity includes this information:

The status of the problems that are processed by Electronic Service Agent
The service-assigned number
Retry information and whether service information accompanies the problem
Whether service information for the problem has been sent

Service information collection includes the type of service information that was collected and sent to IBM, and the dates and times the information was collected and sent.

The audit log contains information about Electronic Service Agent activities and errors that have been encountered.

To display Electronic Service Agent activities, do the following:

To display the problem reporting information, from the Electronic Service Agent main menu, select option 4 (Display problem reporting information).
To display the service information collection activities from the Electronic Service Agent main menu, select option 5 (Display service information collection).
To display the audit log from the Electronic Service Agent main menu, select option 14 (Display audit log).

Sending a test problem

To determine if the problem reporting function is working properly, send a test problem to IBM. To send a test problem, from the Electronic Service Agent main menu, select option 15 (Send test problem).

Reporting software problem

Electronic Service Agent reports software problems detected by the i5/OS Service Monitor. Service Monitor is a service function that monitors the system for specific conditions. In addition to reporting the problems, Electronic Service Agent automatically sends the primary service information to IBM. Secondary service information can be manually sent to IBM.

To manually send the secondary service information, follow these steps:

From the Electronic Service Agent main menu, Select option 2 (Run service information collection).
In the Collect information field, specify *YES.
In the Send information field, specify *YES.
In the Service information field, specify *PRBID.
Press Enter.
In the Problem identifier field, specify the problem identifier from the problem log for which the secondary service information is to be sent.
In the Information for a problem field, specify *SECONDARY.

Stopping and starting Electronic Service Agent

Electronic Service Agent is automatically started when the activation process is completed; however, sometimes you need to stop or start Electronic Service Agent.

To stop or start Electronic Service Agent problem monitoring, from Jobs group on the Electronic Service Agent main menu, select option 8 (End jobs), option 9 (Start jobs), or option 10 (Work with jobs). If Electronic Service Agent is stopped using option 8 (End jobs), it will automatically start after rebooting the system or logical partition.

Another way to stop and start the Service Agent is through the Enable setting: Specify *YES to enable and *NO to disable the Electronic Service Agent. If Electronic Service Agent is stopped using the Enable setting, it will stay stopped after rebooting the system or logical partition. To restart Service Agent, set Enable to *YES.

Testing connectivity to IBM

To verify that the Service Agent connection between the system or the logical partition and IBM is working, from the Electronic Service Agent main menu, select option 17 (Verify Service Agent connection).