Alerting and sending SEUM Screenshot from error

emarksrpi86

Is there any way via alerting to have Orion email a copy of the screenshot of an error with the alert?

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Accepted answers

lukas.cerny

Hello rmyerspin,

as aLTeReGo wrote, SEUM version 1.5 has support for ${ScreenshotUrl} macro. The macro contains relative URL so you will still need to specify your server address. Let me give you a brief example:

<img src="">192.168.40.156:8787/${ScreenshotUrl}" />

You can also specify width of the screenshot image by adding optional parameter:

<img src="">192.168.40.156:8787/${ScreenshotUrl}&width=500" />

All comments

jiri.tomek

Hello,
here is step-by-step guide how to include screenshots in your alert emails.

Open alert definition in Advanced Alert Manager
Click on "Trigger Actions" tab and there click on "Add new action"
Select "Send an E-Mail / Page" action
Enter required recipient and sender on "E-Mail/Pager Addresses" tab
Click on "Message" tab and there select "Html format" option, enter required "Subject" and into "Message" box enter:
```
<html><body>Transaction '${Name}' is in '${StatusDescription}' state.<img src="http://YOUR_ORION_SERVER/Orion/SEUM/Controls/ScreenshotImage.ashx?entity=Orion.SEUM.TransactionSteps&entityId=${SQL:SELECT TOP 1 TransactionStepId FROM SEUM_TransactionStepsAlertsData WHERE TransactionId = ${TransactionId} AND Status = 2}&useThumbnail=true&width=500&AccountID=admin&Password=" /></body></html>
```
Whole URL in <img src="..." /> must be without space/newline characters. Here I wrapped it so it is readable but when you write it into alert definition, ensure that there are no spaces in it.

YOUR_ORION_SERVER - should be URL of your SEUM server that you will be able to access from email client where you want to see screenshots.

Status = 2 - means that it selects screenshot of step that is down (status = 2). You can change it if you for example need screenshots for critical steps.

AccountID=admin&Password= - This is authentication info that will be used to access image in SEUM. Example here is for user "admin" and empty password. For user "test" and password "mypassword" this part of URL will be AccountID=test&Password=mypassword
On "SMTP Server" tab enter required SMTP server configuration.
Save changes.

Now you should receive email with screenshot of failing step. Screenshot is still located on SEUM server and is accessed remotelly so your email client must be able to connect to SEUM server to download image.

jiri.tomek

I just realized that image URL that I provided in post above gives you latest image so if you look at email when transaction is back UP, you will see current UP image. To fix this just change <img src="..." /> to:

<img src="YOUR_ORION_SERVER/.../ScreenshotImage.ashx?entity=Orion.SEUM.StepResponseTimeDetail&entityId=${SQL:SELECT TOP 1 TransactionStepId 
FROM SEUM_TransactionStepsAlertsData WHERE TransactionId = ${TransactionId} AND Status = 2}&width=500&dateTime=${SQL:SELECT CAST(DATEDIFF(n,'00010101 00:00:00',[LastPlayed]) AS bigint)*60*10000000 FROM SEUM_TransactionsAlertsData WHERE TransactionId = ${TransactionId}}&AccountID=admin&Password=" />

One difference is that "entity" is changed to "Orion.SEUM.StepResponseTimeDetail" which contains history of failed screenshots.
Second difference is that you need to specify "dateTime" parameter to define which screenshot you want. It's in "ticks" so that is why there is that complicated arithmetic expression.
Also notice that I removed "useThumbnail" parameter from URL so that you can get custom size of image defined by "width" parameter.

Let me know if you have any issues using this.

emarksrpi86

Thanks for the great info.

My concern at this point is embedding a userid and password into a url.

Is there any way to do this without including a password?

jiri.tomek

Unfortunately not. Screenshot image is served by SEUM and it requires authentication. I suggest creating some read-only quest account for this purpose and use it.

Would you be interested in feature when screenshots are available on some static URL also without authentication? Isn't is a security risk if anyone can see screenshots if they know specific URL?

bromine

This setup doesn't work for me because our SQL server is seperate its not running on the same server as orion is. Would you know the SQL query Iwould need to use to be able to get screenshots?

Thanks

jiri.tomek

SQL server on different machine should not affect this unless it has different time than Orion server. Is your SQL server in the same timezone and is time of SQL and Orion synchronized?

bromine

The SQL server time was 5mins off from orion but I changed to match within seconds and I am still just getting a blank box in email.

rmyerspin

Hoping someone can continue this thread and provide some help.

I've been trying to get these error alert screenshots to work for the last couple of days and been struggling a bit. I believe I have the html and SQL statement correct . However, I'm still not getting the screenshots in the email alerts, I either get a box with a Red "X" or it says "There is no screenshot available". Here is the html that I'm placing in my trigger action message(s):

<html><body>
TRANSACTION: ${TransactionName}
STEP: ${Name}
STATUS: ${Status}
DATE/TIME: ${DateTime}
LAST RUN: ${LastPlayed}
ERROR DESCRIPTION: ${ErrorMessage}

<img src="192.168.40.156:8787/.../ScreenshotImage.ashx TOP 1 TransactionStepId FROM SEUM_TransactionStepsAlertsData WHERE TransactionId = ${TransactionId} AND Status = 2}&width=500&dateTime=${SQL:SELECT CAST(DATEDIFF(n,'00010101 00:00:00',[LastPlayed]) AS bigint)*60*10000000 FROM SEUM_TransactionsAlertsData WHERE TransactionId = ${TransactionId}}&AccountID=Guest&Password=xxxxxxxx" />
</body></html>

Here is the resulting html email alert that I receive from the above Trigger Message.

Below is the source code from one of my email alerts and it appears to correct, right?

<img src="">192.168.40.156:8787/.../ScreenshotImage.ashx /><br/></body></html>

Also if I log into the Orion console as Guest and then paste the above URL from the source code, "">192.168.40.156:8787/.../ScreenshotImage.ashx. I am presented with the following screen....

So it seems as though its working, partially, there's just not a screenshot. I just don't understand how could that be? When I am able to go into the transaction having the error and I can clearly see the error screenshot in the console which looks like this...

Here are my specs:

MS Server 2008 R2 64-bit (Virtual Server)
4GB RAM
29.1 GB Free Space on 50GB HDD
SEUM v1.5 Full Version w/ hotfix 1
MS SQL Server Express 2008 R2

Thanks,

Randall

aLTeReGo

This thread was started when SeUM 1.0 was available. Since then we've added this feature natively to the product in SeUM 1.5 through the advanced alert macro ${ScreenshotUrl}. This should eliminate the need for you to do any custom SQL alerts.

lukas.cerny

Hello rmyerspin,

as aLTeReGo wrote, SEUM version 1.5 has support for ${ScreenshotUrl} macro. The macro contains relative URL so you will still need to specify your server address. Let me give you a brief example:

<img src="">192.168.40.156:8787/${ScreenshotUrl}" />

You can also specify width of the screenshot image by adding optional parameter:

<img src="">192.168.40.156:8787/${ScreenshotUrl}&width=500" />