alert-dedupe.py

Are the root causes to all your noisy alerts just a little evasive? Are you missing genuine problems because all of your level 1 technicians get a panic attack when they check the Service Board? This script might be for you.

Features

• Scans multiple Service Boards for duplicate tickets
• Matches those tickets against macros (based on regular expressions)
• Creates a master ticket with an IA note referencing those tickets
• Master ticket can be reopened if closed - within timeframes
• Master ticket can list previously matched tickets in Internal Analysis

Giving it a test-run

1. Download the sourcecode (and pycw library this is based on)
2. In ConnectWise Setup Tables > Service Board create a new service board Testing/Alerts with the following Statuses SilentNew, SilentClose, New (dedupe), Closed (dedupe), Reopened (dedupe)
3. Make sure you have a Catchall company that is active (Service Tickets can be created against it) as well as two test companies (Yellow Systems, L.L.C and Pink Networks, L.L.C)
4. Check the rules.json file - make sure there are Configurations that match the name (the type in the file is just for generation of test ticket data, actual Configuration type is unimportant)
5. Run python alert-dedupe.py --setup, you'll want to follow the prompts and supply it with an Integrator Login (set this up in ConnectWise Setup Tables >> Integrator Logins)
6. Run python alert-dedupe.py --create-test-tickets to create some test tickets in ConnectWise on your new Testing/Alerts board.
7. Run it a few more times. Why not?
8. Run python alert-dedupe.py --loop to process all of those tickets. You can also run python alert-dedupe.py --once to process only a few of these.

What you should see when you run --loop or --once is the tickets are compacted, you know, except where a configuration is invalid.

How it works

1. Scans over Service Boards (options[service_boards) for tickets to process.
2. Matches these tickets using regular expressions (which return identifiable groups)
3. Using the regular expressions, creates a new ticket (ideally, more readable)
4. If that new ticket already exists, piles the duplicate onto the existing ticket
5. Closes the original ticket

Adjusting the rules.json file

Under options

• reopen_tickets if set to 1 a closed master ticket will be reopened if date_crit is met
• date_crit specifies within what time period, or what same time period to look for tickets for reopen_tickets (within-year, within-quarter, same-month, same-week etc)
• include_previous - how many entries (not matched to current master ticket) you would like to reference in Internal Analysis
• search_limit - how many tickets to search for at a time
• status_new - status used to create new master tickets
• status_close - status used to close duplicate tickets
• status_reopen - status used to reopen a closed master ticket
• search_boards - an array of boards to process
• search_status - an array of statuses to process

Some of the above can also be applied under rules which then apply for each subject beneath it.

Stuff you might need

• pycw - Python ConnectWise library
• python-sqlite3 - for storing historical data
• python-suds - required by pycw

TODO (one day..)

• If a configuration does not match, leave a note in original alert ticket
• Email alerts for tickets, ability to adjust ticket Impact/Severity
• Better --help
• Cleanup of code

Important Information

Code is offered without any form of warranty. You alone are liable for the data on your system.

No license is offered. Just be cool.

If you have any feedback, feel free to email them to me (alex -at- kbni -dot- net).