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Author's profile photo Tom Cenens

Solution Manager 7.1: The return of the widget

Introduction

Widgets, everyone has heard of them, small and simple applications that provide the end-user with relevant information. Some years ago widgets were a real hype and SAP had a specific widget available for SAP Solution Manager and the necessary guides and information on how to build your own widget. That widget is not available anymore though but I invite you to read on and find out about the return of the widget.

System monitoring

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Picture 1.0

Let’s be honest, the system monitoring functionality in the new SAP Solution Manager 7.1 simply looks great! I only took a screenshot of a small part of my screen to show the way CPU metrics are displayed. In my opinion the new monitoring features on their own are already reason enough to throw out Solution Manager 7.0 and install Solution Manager 7.1 or to upgrade an existing Solution Manager 7.0 to Solution Manager 7.1.

It’s not just the monitoring itself that is nicely done, the integration into other area’s of Solution Manager is also a very positive pointer and the results into a powerful combination of tools and services to help you manage your SAP system landscapes.

The return of the widget

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Picture 1.1

Solution Manager 7.1 features a widget in the system monitoring scenario. You can find the widget by navigating to the Technical Monitoring work center and then going to the System Monitoring feature (see picture 1.1). After selecting one or multiple SAP systems from the list in the right pane and clicking the System Monitoring button to start the system monitoring application.

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Picture 1.2

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Picture 1.3

On the top right you will notice the download link “Download widget” (see picture 1.2). After clicking the link a pop-up will appear (see picture 1.3). To get the widget up and running simply follow the instructions which are referenced in the pop-up.

Getting the widget up and running

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Picture 1.4

Configuration

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Picture 1.5

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Picture 1.6

To configure the widget (see picture 1.4) to connect to Solution Manager you need to maintain the Widget Preferences. You can access the Widget Preferences by right clicking the widget and clicking on the Widget Preferences menu option (see picture 1.5). The first tab is the System Monitoring Settings which you can see in picture 1.6. In the input field of the Web Service URL* you have to enter the web service url. Note that the port 80<instance number> is used so 8001 is only valid for the specific SAP Solution Manager system I used for this example.

Web Service URL*:

http://<hostname>.<FQDN>:80<instance number>/sap/bc/srt/rfc/sap/AI_TMON_OVERVIEW_SERVICE/100/SYSTEMMONITORINGWIDGET/bindingwidget

HTTP URL*:

http://<hostname>.<FQDN>:80<instance number>

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Picture 1.7

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Picture 1.8

In picture 1.7 you can see the configuration of which monitoring objects you wish to display on the widget. By default there the maximum amount of monitored object you can display equals to five. You can look-up the monitored object name in the monitoring tree that resides on the same page as the download widget link (reference picture 1.2). Note that picture 1.7 and 1.8 are examples in which I erased the SAP system identifier (picture 1.7) and the SAP system identifier and the host name (picture 1.8). This means you would normally use AA1~ABAP for example as monitored object.

Widget editor?

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Picture 1.9

If you have been reading this blog very carefully you might have noticed already that the widget in picture 1.9 does not look the same as the widget shown previously in this blog (ref picture 1.4). After the widget was up and running (see picture 1.9 for an example) the customer stepped into the office and told us that looks cool but the red icon is not very visible on the dark blue background. At moments like those the wheels in my head are set in motion, crackling perhaps, they start spinning and ideas flow in. I was like mm interesting, we should look into changing this widget. I started to search for a widget editor but I couldn’t directly find any tool that seemed to offer what I was looking for.

Lets try something

After the failed quest for a proper widget editor I decided to just take a peek what was inside of the .widget file and I renamed the .widget file into a .zip file and opened it up with winrar. To my surprise (maybe a bit exaggerated) I could just extract the widget content to my disk 🙂 .

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Picture 2.0

After unpacking the widget I started to look into the different files that are available out of which the widget is build. You can clearly see in picture 2.0 that the widget is build using the MVC (Model – View – Controller) method. This brings back memories of the old days (I know I’m not that old yet but hey it’s a catchy phrase to use).

I’m not going to spool the fun just yet and spill out each location of what is what and what is where. I’ll leave that for you to find out yourself for now at least. If you can’t figure it out you probably better leave the widget as is but I might write another blog post somewhere in the future to give some hints to those who are not into programming.

Changes made

What changes have I made to the widget so far? Not that many actually. I just played around with it during a relative short amount of time and changed the overal color scheme of the widget. To do that I edited the picture parts in GIMP (freeware) and shaded the widget a lighter blue color and I adjusted the stylesheet of the widget to use different font sizes, family and color. Another test I did was adding a sixth monitored object which also works fine. As I mentioned before the default maximum is five.

After you have adjusted files in the extracted folder, pack the widget back in using winrar (or another zip tool) and make sure you end up with the same folder structure again. Then simply rename the .zip to .widget and load the widget using the Yahoo Widget applications on your desktop.

*Tip: Use a different folder name for the start folder. The default is symon, if you name it symon2 and you pack it up like that into symon2.widget, you have a second widget instead of replacing your original widget.

Imagine

Imagine what other widgets can be build based on this source. Is it legal, are you allowed to by SAP? No idea to be honest. It used to be legit for sure since there are multiple sources on SCN that are related to building these kind of widgets. For some reason there is an older Solution Manager widget which is no longer available for download. Although it was largely based on a similar concept the links are no longer working and you are referenced to another page.

The source code of the widget from Solution Manager 7.1 contains everything you need though to build your own widgets.

Information sources

There are also still lots of informations sources available on SCN concerning widgets. Search for keywords such as “widgets” to find out more.

SCN Widget Gallery

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/widget-gallery

Getting started with widgets

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/index?rid=/webcontent/uuid/f0826e7d-8ea1-2a10-119d-c0093df798da

Emerging technology – Widgets wiki page (2008)

http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/EmTech/Widgets?bc=true

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      27 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Naor Shalom
      Naor Shalom

      HI Tom

      I downaload the widget but the windows not recognize this widget

      I try to open the documentation and it's not work

      you now whay?

      Naor

      Author's profile photo Venkatesh R
      Venkatesh R

      Hi Naor,

      Kindly refer the documentation below. This is the link it refers to.

      http://help.sap.com/saphelp_sm71_sp01/helpdata/en/13/3232bd653849d28db5d24925b534b6/frameset.htm

      What is the version of windows that you are working on?

      Regards,

      Venkatesh

      Author's profile photo Tom Cenens
      Tom Cenens
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Naor

      Thanks for your comment.

      Did you manage to get it working?

      Kind regards

      Tom

      Author's profile photo Naor Shalom
      Naor Shalom

      HI Tom

      thanks for your help

      but i download the widget and the windows not recognize this file

      Best Regards

      Naor

      Author's profile photo Tom Cenens
      Tom Cenens
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Naor

      Make sure you go through all the neccesary steps stated in picture 1.3. These are not explained in detail in this blog because it's click and follow.

      You need to have the Yahoo Widget Engine installed before the .widget file is recognized. If it's still not recognized, first start up your Yahoo Widget Engine and open up the file through there. You can normally configure recognition of the file extension as well if it's not done by the standard setup.

      Kind regards

      Tom

      Author's profile photo Nicholas Chang
      Nicholas Chang

      Hi Tom,

      first impression is good! but i'm still working on the template & alert notification. Is yours complete working now? Do you use sapwebdisp to allow it to be viewed in external? eg: IPAD? eheh

      Author's profile photo Tom Cenens
      Tom Cenens
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Nicholas

      The technical monitoring is enabled but we are using other monitoring tools for alerting at this moment. I will definitely try and convince the management to also use technical monitoring for alerting in the future.

      Kind regards

      Tom

      Author's profile photo Martin English
      Martin English

      Nice piece of work, Tom,
        Before you roll it out through your organisation (even 'just' the help desk), I would suggest a few things;

      • Make sure your thresholds are correctly set, as people will learn to ignore it if it is reporting incorrect status - ultimately, you want people to use it to direct their performance and availability queries
      • Educate the users on exactly what is being monitored, so that they CAN use the widget to direct their performance and availability queries
      • Change the widget's appearnce to include a company logo (or a background with the company logo).

      This is a useful way of marketing the BASIS / Netweaver Support team to the rest of the Business - Doing a professional looking job of this means they will consider YOU (or your team) to be more professional.

      hth.

      Author's profile photo Tom Cenens
      Tom Cenens
      Blog Post Author

      Hey Martin

      I don't know yet if it will be used by the organization. Where I see it being rolled out first is the second and third level support if it's rolled out at all.

      I agree with what you are stating though, those are really good tips to get going with the implementation of such a widget.

      The widget can pretty easily be changed around to have a specific (even company specific) look.

      Best regards

      Tom

      Author's profile photo Jansi Rani Murugesan
      Jansi Rani Murugesan

      Hi Tom,

      wonderfully delivered !!

      Thanks

      Jansi

      Author's profile photo Tom Cenens
      Tom Cenens
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Jansi

      Thanks for your comment!

      Kind regards

      Tom

      Author's profile photo Nicholas Chang
      Nicholas Chang

      Hi Tom,
      Awesome, I was just finished my technical monitoring and will adopt the widget. Thanks!!

      Author's profile photo Tom Cenens
      Tom Cenens
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Nicholas

      Nice to know, how do you like the technical monitoring? I find it's very refreshing compared to the "old" CCMS.

      Kind regards

      Tom

      Author's profile photo Nicholas Chang
      Nicholas Chang

      Hi Tom,

      I enter the webservice, http URL and monitored object.. but when i save and it prompt me for the login, widget program error appears once i put in my solman username and password when prompt. Check event viewer it just say application error.

      and i cant find AI_TMON_OVERVIEW_SERVICE/100/SYSTEMMONITORINGWIDGET/bindingwidget in sicf....

      any clues?

      Thanks,

      Nicholas

      Author's profile photo Tom Cenens
      Tom Cenens
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Nicholas

      Did you get this fixed? Sry didn't catch the comment earlier (enabled mail notifications now).

      Best regards

      Tom

      Author's profile photo Erick Verbena
      Erick Verbena

      Nice & Smooth! 🙂

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Did any body has considered the fact that we can not install yahoo Widget Engine from the link shown in Picture 1.3 as it says Yahoo! Desktop Widgets Gallery Website Discontinued on April 11, 2012.

      How would we get the engine now. Or is there any workaround.

      Author's profile photo Tom Cenens
      Tom Cenens
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Lukesh

      Yes, that's correct. You can still get it off non official sites.

      Best regards

      Tom

      Author's profile photo Martin English
      Martin English

      Hi Lukesh, Tom,

        I've done a bit of googling; As far as I can tell version 4.5.2 is the latest / last version of the Konfabulator / Yahoo / discontinued widgets engine. Some reliable looking sites for download are:

      http://mac.freewareupdate.com/desktop-enhancements/4247-download-yahoo-widget-engine
      http://yahoo-widget-engine.soft32.com

      and http://lightquick.co.uk/jdownloads/yahoo-widget-sdk-and-runtime-engine.html

      which also has a download link for the mac version

      I'm currently on the work network, which won't let me download anything (it's a large government department, with attendant security paranoia), so I haven't been able to test these links (and if you're a fashion victim, you would have to test the mac ones yourself anyway 🙂

      hth

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Dear Tom,

      Excellent blog Tom

      i am facing difficulty in generating webservice URL, can you please provide the steps for that as well.

      Thanks a lot.

      Regards,

      Ramesh Reddy.

      Author's profile photo Tom Cenens
      Tom Cenens
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Ramesh

      Sry for late reply but SOLMAN_SETUP should do this for you normally if I'm not mistaken.

      Best regards

      Tom

      Author's profile photo Venkatesh R
      Venkatesh R

      Hi All,

      A new Android app for System Monitoring is released\. You can find the link below.

      https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sap.techmon.application

      The app works with SP06 of SAP Solution Manager.

      Regards,

      Venkatesh

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Tom,

      Excellent blog,

      In it you mention editing the widget to allow an extra system to be listed in the monitor.

      I don't suppose you could give me some pointers. I've looked through the .js files and thought I had found where to do it but I couldn't get it to work. We have 7 production systems and it would be real nice to have all 7 in the widget.

      Many thanks

      Ian

      Author's profile photo Tom Cenens
      Tom Cenens
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Ian

      I actually don't have it installed on my laptop anymore since I got a new one so I'll have to look into it again so it will take me some time for sure before I can give a proper answer.

      If I remember correctly, I located the four elements that were displayed and I also searched for associations of those elements (use a decent editor and open up multiple files and search through them all) ~by looking at those, I was able to derive how one element was placed on the screen. Again, if I remember correctly, I also had to change the dimension of some widget elements in order to fit everything onto the widget.

      My tip would be: Try to start with small changes so you get the hang of changes something and then progress piece by piece to advance further.

      Best regards

      Tom

      Author's profile photo Tom Cenens
      Tom Cenens
      Blog Post Author
      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Tom,

      very usefull cookbook for setup system monitoring widget.

      Could you explain more deeply where exactly you change a parameter to increase of the lines for monitoring objects? You mantioned it in the previous block.

      Thanks a lot.

      rené


      Author's profile photo Tom Cenens
      Tom Cenens
      Blog Post Author