Category: Notification

How to test SMTP with PowerShell for setting up Maximo email notifications?

30 July 2022 / Viet Tran / 0 Comments

In an enterprise IT environment, it is sometimes difficult to set up Maximo to talk with SMTP service due to networking and security restrictions. To troubleshoot SMTP configuration, in the past, we used Telnet from the CMD tool. However, in newer versions of Windows Server, Telnet is often not installed by default. In such cases, we can use PowerShell to test and confirm the SMTP and firewall setting is working before configuring SMTP in Maximo.

The first thing I would do is check whether firewall has been opened so that the port used by SMTP service (e.g. port 25) is reachable from the Maximo server. I’ve provided details on how to do this with PowerShell in this post: Check network firewall status with PowerShell

Once it is confirmed SMTP service is reachable, the next step I would do is to ensure we can send an email with the provided login details. Thus, from PowerShell running on the Maximo server, I would do the following commands:

Note that if SMTP service doesn’t require authentication, we don’t need to run the first command and use the parameter -Credential $cred in the second command.

Replace placeholder values with actual details required by your SMTP service, and for the -To parameter, enter your email address.

The Send-MailMessage command will send an email using your SMTP
service. If it works, you should receive an email.

Once SMTP service is confirmed working, I’ll go ahead putting the details to System Properties in Maximo and that should be it.

To test that Maximo can send emails, the simplest way I would
do is to open any work order, then use the Select Action > Create >
Communication, then entering my own email into the “To” address field. If it
works, after clicking on Send, it should show a successful status, and you’ll
receive an email within seconds. Otherwise, you might want to look at
SystemOut.log file to see if there are any details of the error there.

Setup Cognos 11 to send email with Gmail (2020)

30 May 2020 / Viet Tran / 0 Comments

When I tried to set up Cognos 11 to send notifications via Gmail, it failed because
Google blocked access from Unsecured App. Even if I tried to turn off this option
and tried again, it still failed because Google automatically turned this setting
off again. So I had to create an App Password for my Gmail account to make it
work by following the steps below:

Step 1: Configure Gmail account

Log in to my Gmail account, go to “Manage your Google Account page”, then go to “Security” section
Enable 2-Step Verification
Once 2-Step Verification is enabled, the App Passwords option will be visible under the 2-Step verification option

Click on “App Passwords” to generate a new one.
On the next page, choose “Mail” app, and “Other (Custom Name)” in the Select Device drop-down

On the next page, enter “Cognos” for the name of the app, then click on “GENERATE”

On the next page, copy the password, paste it to Notepad, then click on Done

Step 2: Configure Cognos:

Open “IBM Cognos Analytics” > “IBM Cognos Configuration” (not the one with the same name under “Framework Manager”)

Open “Notification” on the left side Explorer bar, enter
the configuration as follows:
- SMTP Mail Server: smtp.gmail.com:465
- Account and Password:
  - User ID: <account_name>@gmail.com
  - Password: <Generated app password
    from the previous step>
- Default Sender: <account_name>@gmail.com
- SSL Encryption Enabled: True

Click Ok. Then Save the setting
Right-click “Notification” on the left Explorer menu again, and click on “Test” to check if the connection is working.

After the SMTP connection has been tested, to send a report from Cognos via email, we have to restart Cognos service for the change to take effect.

Send Email From Maximo Using Automation Script - Feature Image

Send email from automation script

14 October 2019 / Viet Tran / 0 Comments

Simple stuff but I got a few people asked me this same question, so here is how to create an automation script to send email from Maximo:

1 – Create a Communication Template:

Template ID: MY_COMM_TEMPLATE
Description: Test Communication Template
Applies To: ASSET
Send From: <your_email@address> (Note: to make this work, you must have setup smtp and able to send email from Maximo first
Subject and message: as shown below

In the “Recipients” tab, add an Email recipient pointing to your own email:

2 – Create an Automation Script

Create an autoscript with Object Launch Point on the “ASSET” object, on the SAVE (Update) event, choose Language = Python and copy/paste the following sample script:

3 – Test sending email

Open an Asset then change its status to INACTIVE, you should receive an notification in your email inbox:

Send SMS Notification from Maximo using Twilio

2 September 2018 / Viet Tran / 10 Comments

Email or SMS Notification?

Occassionally, someone would ask me if we can configure Maximo to send notifications via SMS. With Maximo, the answer to such questions is always Yes. However, with this one, it will cost some money, very cheap though.

Since it is not free, I would say for most Maximo notification scenarios, the user would be ok with email notification which is free. However, there are certain scenarios where SMS notifications can add value such as:

Notify a field worker when a new high priority Work Order is assigned to him/her
Notify an asset owner when the asset deviates from the normal operating parameter range or when downtime is reported
Notify Maximo admin when there are repeated login attempts from an uncommon IP address or when there is a major problem tracked by the Escalation app.

In the section below, I provide the detailed steps on how to set up a trial Twilio account and send notifications from Maximo

A. Setup a Twilio trial account

With your trial account, Twilio will give you a small initial balance to buy a phone number and use the service. I got $15, and it will cost me $6 to buy a phone number, and 5 cents to send a text message.

Create a trial account on Twilio.com: you’ll have to use your real mobile phone number to verify the account.
Login using your trial account, go to Console, then create a new Project. Select “Products”, then choose “Programmable SMS”. Give your project a name, for example: “Maximo”. Then skip the rest of the steps to create the project
On the left menu, click on the icon with the title “Programmable SMS”. In this menu, open the “SMS” submenu, open the “Messaging Services” page, then click on “Create new Messaging Service”
Give the messaging service a name, such as “MaximoNotification”. For use case, choose “Notifications, Outbound Only”. Then click on Create
After the messaging service is created, open it. On the left menu, click on Number to open it, then click on “Buy a Number” to purchase a telephone number. On the pop-up, select your country code, then click on “Search”. It will give you a list of numbers to choose from
Choose a number with SMS capability, and click on Buy. Depends on the country you live in, you may have to enter some details for your new number. I’m in Australia, so I have to enter my address.
After purchasing a number, you are ready to send SMS messages from your Twilio account.
Please note: with Trial account, it can only send SMS messages to a Verified Number. Your mobile number which you entered when registering is automatically added to this list. So you will be able to send SMS to that number. But if you like to send SMS to a different number, you’ll have to add it to the ‘Verified Caller ID’ list first.
Go to “Console Dashboard”, open the “Settings” sub-menu, then open “General” page to take note of your Account SID, and Authentication Token. You will need it to send an SMS from Maximo.

B. Configure Maximo to send REST requests to Twilio

There are different ways to set this up depending on your requirement. In this example, I’ll create an ‘Action’ automation script, and send a REST request using Apache HTTPClient library. Action auto script can be used with Workflows or Escalation. In this example, I’ll send out an SMS when the workflow is initiated on the Service Request application.

The setup steps are as follows:

Go to Automation Script application, create an ‘Action launch point’ automation script. Give the launch point a name, for example: “SENDSMS”. Set the action name as “SENDSMS” too. Set “SR” as the main object. Select “Jython” for script language. For the script, copy/paste the example code below to the “Source Code”
With the code above, replace {YOUR_ACCOUNT_SID}, {YOUR_AUTH_TOKEN}, {YOUR_PURCHASED_PHONE_NUMBER} with actual details of your Twilio account. For testing purposes, replace {RECIPIENT_PHONE_NUMBER} with your phone number. Later on, once it works, you can replace it with a variable retrieved from your record using mbo.getString()
Create a new workflow “SEND_SMS” for the SR object, connect the Start and Stop node with one line. And set the line to use ‘SENDSMS’ action. After that, Enable and Activate the Workflow. And remember to Add Workflow to SR application using the Select Action menu if you haven’t done so.
Open an SR record, then click on the route button to initiate the “SEND_SMS” workflow
After clicking on the Route workflow button, you should be able to receive an SMS message on your phone:

Source Code:

In a later post, I’ll talk about integrating Twilio with Maximo to create new Service Requests via SMS. For now, good luck with spamming your end-users with endless work requests 🙂