Configuring Electronic Service Agent operational settings

Electronic Service Agent attributes control many aspects of how Electronic Service Agent operates and transmits information to IBM, including the list of users to receive Electronic Service Agent messages and the time of day that Electronic Service Agent collects service information. By configuring Electronic Service Agent, you can have Electronic Service Agent perform the functions that are important to your service environment.

You configure Electronic Service Agent through the Electronic Service Agent main menu. To configure the operational settings, follow these steps:

  1. On a command line, type GO SERVICE.
  2. Select option 1 (Change Service Agent attributes). The Change Service Agent attributes display is shown.
    Note: The Enable option controls whether Electronic Service Agent reports problems and transmits service information or not. Specify Yes to enable the Electronic Service Agent for problem reporting and service information transmission. Specify No to disable the problem reporting and service information transmission.
    These are some of the settings that control Electronic Service Agent activities:
    • Problem reporting retry (Auto report retry): The retry attributes are used for service requests that are placed automatically by Service Agent. These attributes define the action that Electronic Service Agent takes when it fails at an attempt to report a problem. These are the retry attributes:
      • Retry: Whether service requests that are placed automatically by Service Agent are to be retried if an attempt fails.
      • Frequency: The frequency, in minutes, at which service requests are retried.
      • Number of times to retry: The number of times to try to report a problem.
      • Notify users: Whether Service Agent users are to receive a message when a retry occurs.
    • Product activity log analysis: This determines whether problems in the product activity log are analyzed and potentially reported to IBM. You can enable the analysis, set the start hour and the interval (in hours) when the analysis will occur. You can also indicate that a message should be sent to the Notify Users list when the analysis is run.
    • Notify user ID: The user IDs specified for this field receive messages about Electronic Service Agent activity. In addition to the specified users, QSYSOPR, QSRV and QSRVAGT also receive messages.
    • Service information: IBM support uses service information to help with problem resolution. Service information is collected daily at the specified time and sent to IBM at the specified time. Information is sent only if the information has changed since the last time it was collected and sent.

      The connection verification timer is used to automatically test the connection to IBM. You can set the interval at which the test occurs. If the test fails, a message is sent to the list of users specified in the Notify user ID field.

      There are also fields that indicate what inventory should be collected and when the collection and send of inventory should occur: