HP Web Jetadmin - Using Proactive Alerts with HP Web Jetadmin

the user by selecting Tools, then Options and choosing Device Management > Device Polling, and

then Alerts in the tree (see Figure 3). Rates can be configured anywhere between 1-168 hours for

General alerts and 5-360 minutes for Critical alerts.

Supplies alerts adaptive poller

For user-defined supplies alerts under the Supplies subscription type, an alert is generated when a

device crosses the user-defined supply-level threshold. With these alerts, an adaptive polling rate

mechanism assists in optimizing the amount of traffic that is generated in gathering the data required

to calculate remaining levels for supplies. When subscribing to Supplies alerts, HP Web Jetadmin

performs a baseline poll at subscription time, launches a second poll after 24 hours, continues to

calculate the rate of use from that point forward to predict when the supply will cross the selected

threshold, and adjusts the polling rate accordingly based upon the calculated usage rate over time.

Devices are placed into a polling rate (such as 1, 2, 6, 12, 24, 72 and 168 hour poll rates) that is

continually adjusted depending upon the supply’s calculated usage rate. Since each supply on each

device can be consumed at a different rate, they can all be polled at different times as well. This

means that the same device can be in multiple pollers. The supplies pollers are unaffected by the

polling queue times used for general/critical alerts. They are also unaffected by the background

poller that Web Jetadmin uses to populate device columns for remaining levels.

To determine remaining supply levels, HP Web Jetadmin must examine the entire prtMarkerSupplies

table to determine percent remaining for all supplies. Therefore, HP Web Jetadmin uses one hour as

the fastest polling interval for scalability concerns. The reason for allowing a user to select a threshold

upon which an alert is triggered is to provide a mechanism whereby the user can select a percent

remaining such that HP Web Jetadmin can detect when the device needs replenishment before the

supply runs out. Selecting a proper threshold to allow for sufficient time in replacing the supply is

critical.

The adaptive poller calculates an average rate of use for each subscription, compares it to how far

away the current remaining level is to the subscribed threshold, and places the subscription into one

of the adaptive polling schedules. Problems can arise when a device is slowly consuming toner and

suddenly drops a large percentage in a day. While a drastic drop in toner level is rare, it is quite

possible HP Web Jetadmin would have the subscription in the maximum poller set to once a week as

it had no reason to believe the subscribed threshold would be met any time soon, and the sudden

drop could cross the subscribed threshold while HP Web Jetadmin isn’t due to poll for several days. In

that scenario, the alert would be missed, or not sent for several days. If this particular condition is

happening in a customer environment, a configuration file can be edited to more or less convert the

adaptive poller into a static poller to ensure events are not missed.

Cases may arise where a consumable drops a drastic percentage in a very short time period. If Web

Jetadmin has placed the consumable in the weekly poller believing the supply won’t reach the desired

threshold for quite some time, it is possible the alert could be missed completely before the

consumable runs out. To minimize the possibility of such cases, supplies threshold alerts can be

instructed to abort the adaptive poller and use a user-defined static poller at some percentage above

the desired frequency (see Figure 3).

NAVIGATING ALERTS FEATURES

A variety of controls exist to configure alerts and to view alerts information.