Service Portal Tips

Customizing Service Portal

• Customizing the Portal

  You can customize the display of the Portal. For details about customizing the portal, refer to the Manage Customizations in the Identity Management section from the Service Portal online help for administrators.

• Customizing the Launchpad

  You can customize the display of the Launchpad. For details about customizing the launchpad, refer to the HPE Propel Customizing the Launchpad whitepaper.

  Note As Service Portal is based on HPE Propel, the Propel customization techniques also work for Service Portal. For HPE Propel whitepapers, see https://softwaresupport.hpe.com/km/KM01746029.

Applying Custom Service Portal Themes

You can apply custom Service Portal themes to change the appearance of the Launchpad and applications in the Service Portal. For details about applying custom themes, see Service Portal Custom Themes.

Manually Changing the Keystore Password

The keystore password on the Service Portal host is automatically changed to “propel2014” during the initial installation. Though not required, HPE recommends that you change the default keystore password for the Service Portal host. To change the keystore password, execute the following commands:

# keytool –storepasswd –storepass propel2014 -new <NEW_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD>
-keystore /opt/hp/propel/security/propel.truststore

# ./configureKeys.sh --setkspassword <NEW_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD>

Where NEW_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD is the new keystore password that you specify.

Changing Service Portal Requests Redeliveries for Unavailable HPE SM System

If HPE Service Manager is integrated with Service Portal and the HPE SM system becomes unavailable for Service Portal to deliver requests, the default number of attempted requests redeliveries is five and the interval is every 30 seconds.

You can configure these redelivery parameters in the
/opt/hp/propel/sx/WEB-INF/sx.properties file on the Service Portal host:

sx.dlx.redelivery.interval.ms=30000
sx.dlx.redelivery.max.count=5

Where the interval property is in milli-seconds.

Service Portal will automatically retry as configured in /opt/hp/propel/sx/WEB-INF/sx.properties. Failed requests are added to a manual retry list. The Diagnostics tab in the Supplier Detail view indicates a failed Synchronizations status for unsent requests. An orgadmin can use the Manual Retry tab on the Supplier Detail view where they can manually retry to sync a request with the Retry button. The list of requests to be retried can be filtered such that one or more requests are retried. Upon submission, the automatic retry will start again from the beginning. If it fails again, failed requests will be re-added to the manual retry list.

To cancel failed requests in the retry list, the orgadmin can use the Terminate button in the Manual Retry view. The termination removes the failed requests from the retry list and the requests are displayed as failed in the Service Portal.

Managing Licensing

Service Portal uses these license types:

• Instant-on licensing – implemented when installing Service Portal and limited to 60 days.
• Permanent – either unlimited or limited duration.

For details, refer to the Service Portal Automation License topic in the Identity Management section from the Service Portal online help . (You must be logged into Service Portal as the admin user to view this topic.)

Understanding Administrative and Consumer Roles in Service Portal

Access to applications in Service Portal is controlled through Service Portal users. There are three types of Service Portal users:

• Administrator:
  • Logs in as the admin user with the "propel" password at
    $PROPEL_VM_HOSTNAME:9000/org/Provider
  • Manages Service Portal settings across all of the organizations. For example, creating and managing organizations or content packs.
  • Has access to the Identity, Content Management, and Diagnostics applications.
• Organization Administrator:
  • Logs in as the orgadmin user with the "propel" password at
    $PROPEL_VM_HOSTNAME:9000/org/CONSUMER
  • Manages the organization, creates suppliers, aggregates and publishes catalog items, and manages catalogs, categories, and policies. Additionally can perform all Organization Consumer functions (for example shopping and support requests).
  • Has access to the Shop, Knowledge, Request Support, Catalogs, Catalog Items, Categories, Policies, Catalog Connect, Suppliers, and Survey applications.
• Organization Consumer:
  • Logs in as the consumer user with the "propel" password at
    $PROPEL_VM_HOSTNAME:9000/org/CONSUMER
  • Performs shopping, manages subscriptions, searches knowledge articles, and requests support.
  • Has access to the Shop, Knowledge, Request Support, and Survey applications.

Where $PROPEL_VM_HOSTNAME is the fully qualified host name of the Service Portal host.

Using Common LDAP Server with Service Portal and End-Point Systems

To prevent errors in Service Portal log files that are related to unknown users, HPE recommends that all integrated end-point systems (suppliers) share a common LDAP server with Service Portal. Otherwise, identically named users need to be created on both the Service Portal system and the integrated end-point system.

Viewing the SSL Certificate-Signing Algorithm

HPE recommends reviewing the certificate-signing algorithms used and ensuring that strong encryption is implemented. For example, SHA1 is sometimes used, and instead, stronger algorithms such as SHA256 should be used.

To view a certificate’s signing algorithm, execute the following command:

# keytool –printcert –file <SSL-CERTIFICATE> | grep –i algorithm

For example:

# keytool –printcert –file /opt/hp/propel/security/propel_host.crt | grep algorithm
Signature algorithm name: SHA256withRSA
#

Filter HPE SM Search Results by Display Name

When adding an aggregation in the Catalog Connect application and using the displayName column in the Query Filter field, the query can return more results than expected.

Because displayName is part of an HPE SM information retrieval (IR) key, searching on a specified displayName value can return more results than expected. By removing displayName from the HPE SM IR key, you are able to correctly search on displayName values.

Before aggregating HPE SM items into Service Portal, make the following HPE SM information retrieval (IR) configuration change to enable filtering by displayName.

1. From the HPE Service Manager Client, access the Table definitions as follows:
   On the System Navigator tab, open System Definition > Tables > svcDisplay
2. Select the Fields and Keys tab (bottom of the display).
3. In the Keys content, select IR key:description – displayName.
4. Under General, select displayName, then click Remove.
5. Click Save.

Attachment Size and File Types in Service Portal

You can control the size and allowable file types for attachments to Service Portal Support Requests and Service and Support catalog items. Related properties are located in the /opt/hp/propel/catalog/config.yml file and their default values are:

blobstore
  fileLimit: 20971520
  fileExtensionWhiteList:
    - jpg
    - svg
    - png
    - ico
    - bmp
    - jpeg
    - doc
    - docx
    - ppt
    - pptx
    - xls
    - xlsx
    - xlt
    - xml
    - xsd
    - uml
    - pdf
    - txt
    - json
    - yml
    - csv
  whiteListEnabled: false

By default, 20971520 bytes (approximately 20 MB) is allowed per file and all file types are allowed, even if file extensions are already defined in the fileExtensionWhiteList property. The list of file extensions in the white list is not enabled by default.

To enable the white list of allowable file extensions, you need to specify the following in the config.yml file.

whiteListEnabled: true

After modifying the config.yml file, for the changes to take effect, you must restart the Catalog service with the following command on the Service Portal host:

# systemctl restart catalog

Search thread pools tuning information

Search micro service configuration and tuning issues may cause the thread pool related exceptions from com.netflix.hystrix.exception.HystrixRuntimeException. The HTTP status codes are often 429, 500 or even 503 in such cases. If you encounter such exceptions, update the threadpool tuning parameters in the search.yml by following the detailed explanations on the following Hystrix GitHub wiki page:

https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix/wiki/Configuration#ThreadPool.