Oracle Pulse Functionality Overview

Checking Your Service Performance on the Pulse Dashboard

The Pulse Dashboard provides high-level information in the areas of availability, storage, and incident and change management. Where the Business Transaction Monitoring and Business Insight have been enabled, the Pulse Dashboard also displays information in these areas.

By default, the Pulse Dashboard displays data as of the current day.

Accessing the Pulse Dashboard

To access the Pulse Dashboard, sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse. The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default. The Pulse Dashboard is also easily accessible from anywhere in the application by clicking the Oracle Pulse icon () in the upper left corner.

Monitoring Data on the Pulse Dashboard

The Pulse Dashboard summarizes information in the area of availability, with details about the uptime and the count of unplanned outages that occurred in your production environments, as well as details about the total duration of unplanned complete outages, service interruptions and planned production maintenance outages.

The storage-related charts on the Pulse Dashboard summarize storage usage against entitlement, and show any changes in recent storage activity. Significant changes in either measure warrant immediate investigation.

Moreover, the Pulse Dashboard helps manage your service delivery processes. Take a look at the summary of open Severity 1 service requests and any service requests awaiting your review, as well as the comparison between the number of created service requests and the number of closed service requests for your production environments for a period of 3 complete months. The Pulse Dashboard summarizes all change requests that have been scheduled between the current day and the next 30 days and all change requests requiring customer intervention.

Where the Business Transaction Monitoring functionality has been enabled, the Pulse Dashboard provides an overview of the stability and performance metrics for all your organization's services at application, data center (both local and remote), batch and customer center level. Similarly, the Business Insight widget on the Pulse Dashboard provides a high-level summary view of provisioned Business Insight reports.

Using the Calendar Reports

The Calendar menu provides a 52-week plan of the business events and change events (RFC - Requests for Change) that have been worked out for your organization. This menu ensures the transparent review of the completed and future recommendations, helping you plan for 'known issues', and schedule your production and business activity.

By default, information on the Calendar Monthly View and the Calendar List View tabs is displayed for the current month. For information on how to change the report period, see the Generating Reports for Different Time Periods section in Working with Data.

Accessing and Navigating the Calendar Dashboard

To access the Calendar dashboard:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Click Calendar in the navigation menu, under Governance.

The Calendar Monthly View page opens.
Click the icons in the upper left corner to acccess the tabs on the Calendar dashboard:
- Click to access the Calendar Monthly View for a real-time report on the open and closed change requests and on the business events related to your organization's services, which are scheduled for the current month or any of the previous and the next 12 months.
- Click to access the Calendar List View and see records for the change requests and business events available for your organization's services in the specified time range.

Note:

To view the change requests on the Calendar dashboard, your My Oracle Support account must have privileges to view change requests.

Using the Cloud Service Units Reports

The CSU menu in the navigation menu shows consumption, entitlement and procurement reports for Cloud Service Units (CSU) for customers with Technology Cloud services. This menu is designed to assist with your customer's budget planning process in advance of the OMCS contract renewal, and to help review the CSU consumption in correlation with the budgeting estimates.

By default, information on the Dashboard, List, and Chart views defaults to the current month, with the filter in the upper right corner set to Recent Activities, showing the activities in progress as of the current date. For information on how to change the report period, see the Generating Reports for Different Time Periods section in Working with Data.

Accessing and Navigating the CSU Dashboard

To access the CSU dashboard:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Click CSU in the navigation menu, under Governance.

The CSU Dashboard page opens.
Click the icons in the upper left corner to acccess the views on the CSU dashboard:
- Click to access the CSU Dashboard view to analyze your account details and your consumed Cloud Service Units.
- Click to access the CSU List view to view Cloud Service Units details.
- Click to access the CSU Chart view to analyze Cloud Service Units consumption trend.

Using the Availability Reports

Oracle Pulse presents the latest representation of availability for your organization's services at the time of calculation. This chapter defines how Oracle calculates these metrics, and highlights any assumptions underlying the values presented in Oracle Pulse.

Availability is a defining principle of ITIL service delivery, and Oracle services follow ITIL principles for calculating availability. Following these principles, availability is the percentage of time when a production service is operating as expected. In practice, this means that end users can log in and perform all business transactions.

Availability calculations take into account only unplanned complete outages for your production environments, for which Oracle is responsible. Such outages mean that end users experience total loss of service - they cannot log in or perform any business transactions. Users logged in when the outage starts cannot complete current actions. If the customer organization is responsible for restoring service - for example, carrying out necessary repairs - the outage is not included in availability calculations.

These calculations also exclude planned maintenance outages for your production environments, where the outage occurs at an agreed date and time due to regular maintenance or a customer change request.

If isolated business transactions cannot be completed in your production environments, but other service transactions can be performed, this is considered a service interruption and does not affect availability calculations.

By default, information on the Availability Dashboard view is displayed for the current month, while information on the Availability List and Chart views is displayed for three months prior to the current month. For information on how to change the report period, see the Generating Reports for Different Time Periods section in Working with Data.

Accessing and Navigating the Availability Dashboard

The Availability dashboard is available at both Customer and Service Level, and can be accessed as explained below:

Accessing and Navigating the Availability Dashboard at Customer Level

Use the Availability menu at Customer Level to see availability reports across all services and environments. To access the Availability dashboard at Customer Level:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Click Availability in the navigation menu, under Metrics.

The Availability Dashboard page opens.
Click the icons in the upper left corner to acccess the tabs on the Availability menu:
- Click to access the Availability Dashboard view.
- Click to access the Availability List view.
- Click to access the Availability Chart view.

Accessing and Navigating the Availability Dashboard at Service Level

Use the Availability menu at Service Level to see availability reports for the selected service. To access the Availability dashboard at Service Level:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Open the navigation menu and select the service you want to access.

The Availability Dashboard page at Service level opens.
Click the icons in the upper left corner to acccess the tabs on the Availability menu:
- Click to access the Availability Dashboard view.
- Click to access the Availability List view.
- Click to access the Availability Chart view.

Accessing Availability Information for Environments

Use the Availability menu to see records for unplanned outages () and service interruptions () for the selected environment over the specified time interval. To access availability information for an environment:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Follow the steps in Accessing and Navigating the Availability Dashboard at Service Level to access availability data for the selected service.
Click the List view icon ().

By default, data is shown for all the environments associated with the selected service.
Click the environment filter (), then select the Individual Environment option.
Select an environment from the drop-down list to see the relevant information for the environment of your focus.

Using the Storage Reports

Oracle Pulse provides storage metrics for all your organization's services. Storage usage metrics can be useful in detecting unusual storage consumption, pinpointing the source of each anomaly, and understanding when your storage usage is approaching current entitlement. For example, this can be useful in identifying services that consume a disproportionate amount of storage.

Your storage entitlement is the amount of storage included within the services contract for the service or set of services that your organization has purchased. This includes a base entitlement, and any additional storage purchased either initially or through additions to the contract. Your organization's entitlement is tracked manually by your Oracle customer management team.

Using Oracle Pulse, you can monitor both your organization's storage entitlement and the amount of storage your organization consumes. Storage resources can be located @customer or @partner, termed customer-owned storage. Customer-owned storage includes all storage located in your organization's data centers and those belonging to partner organizations. It also includes any Oracle Exadata and Exalogic servers that your organization owns in Oracle data centers. Oracle-owned storage covers all storage used in Oracle services data centers, excluding any servers that your organization owns.

Consumed storage includes the amount of commercial storage allocated for your organization's services on Oracle-owned storage. Commercial storage usually includes all storage used by applications such as Oracle^® E-Business Suite and the tools needed to run those applications. Tools could include Oracle Database storage or Database and application software. Commercial storage excludes mirrored file systems, backups, and other items that are considered non-commercial storage.

Consumed storage is deducted from your running storage entitlement. The consumed storage value also includes non-commercial storage consumption and usage of your organization's own storage resources. This makes consumed storage an important tool for managing storage and forecasting your future use.

By default, information on the Storage dashboard is displayed for three months prior to the current month. For information on how to change the report period, see the Generating Reports for Different Time Periods section in Working with Data.

Accessing the Storage Dashboard

The Storage dashboard is available at both Customer and Service Level, and can be accessed as explained below:

Accessing the Storage Dashboard at Customer Level

Use the Storage menu at Customer Level to see storage usage across all your organization's services and associated environments. To access the Storage dashboard at Customer Level:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Click Storage in the navigation menu, under Metrics.

The Storage page opens.

Accessing the Storage Dashboard at Service Level

Use the Storage menu at Service Level to see a summary of the total storage growth and historical storage usage for your Managed Cloud and Technology Cloud environments, which will help the understanding of how production and nonproduction environments are growing over time. To access the Storage dashboard at Service Level:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Open the navigation menu and select the service you want to access.

The Availability Dashboard page at Service level opens.
Click Storage in the Service Level navigation menu.

The Storage page opens.

Accessing Storage Information for Environments

Use the Storage menu to see information about storage growth and historical storage usage for each of your organization's Managed Cloud and Technology Cloud environments. To access storage information for an environment:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Follow the steps in Accessing the Storage Dashboard at Service Level to access storage data for the selected service.

By default, data is shown for all the environments associated with the selected service.
Click the environment filter (), then select the Individual Environment option.
Select an environment from the drop-down list to see the relevant information for the environment of your focus.

Using the Business Transaction Monitoring Reports

Business Transaction Monitoring (BTM) helps you understand and manage the performance of your transaction processing system. Transaction response times give a sense of the performance of your services and environments, and can indicate potential or actual issues. BTM can help you profile use, identify issues related to performance, and investigate the cause of failing components in a business process.

Transactions are typically business functions, such as running the monthly payroll for a company. Each transaction is a sequence of operations that you want to monitor as a single unit. Where the user completes some or all of these operations, the transaction is a user interaction. Where all operations are completed without user input, the transaction is a batch job. Oracle Pulse provides users with separate reports for Oracle^® E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft batch jobs, while continuing to support user interactions.

Note:

The Transactions dashboard is displayed in the navigation menu only for services where BTM has been enabled.

If BTM has not been enabled, the Transactions dashboard is hidden at the Customer and Service levels.

BTM metrics are sourced from Oracle^® Enterprise Manager, which, in turn, interrogates the supported Oracle applications. BTM supports Oracle^® E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft batch jobs, which are taken from Oracle^® E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft.

Oracle Pulse can be configured to report on specific targets that Oracle^® Enterprise Manager monitors. Your Oracle Service Delivery Manager (SDM) can work with you to set up and identify your key business transactions for monitoring.

Accessing and Navigating the Transactions Dashboard

The Transactions dashboard is available at both Customer and Service Level, and can be accessed as explained below:

Accessing and Navigating the Transactions Dashboard at Customer Level

Use the Transactions menu at Customer Level to see all transactions that are being monitored across your organization's services. To access the Transactions dashboard at Customer Level:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Click Transactions in the navigation menu.

The Transactions List page opens.
Click the icons in the upper left corner to acccess the tabs on the Transactions dashboard:
- Click to access the Transactions List view.
- Click to access the Transactions Status view.

Accessing and Navigating the Transactions Dashboard at Service Level

Use the Transactions menu at Service Level to see all transactions that are being monitored for the selected service. To access the Transactions dashboard at Service Level:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Open the navigation menu and select the service you want to access.

The Availability Dashbnoard page at Service level opens.
Click Transactions in the Service Level navigation menu.

The Transactions page opens.
Click the icons in the upper left corner to acccess the tabs on the Transactions dashboard:
- Click to access the Transactions List view.
- Click to access the Transactions Status view.

Accessing BTM Information for Environments

Use the Transactions menu to see all transactions that are being monitored for the selected environment. To access BTM information for an environment:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Follow the steps in Accessing and Navigating the Transactions Dashboard at Service Level to access Business Transaction Monitoring data for the selected service.

By default, data is shown for all the environments associated with the selected service.
Select the relevant environment from the drop-down list in the upper left corner, then use the status filter to further refine your search by the transaction type.

Using the Business Insight Reports

Business Insight offers a way to create and integrate simple business reports in Oracle Pulse for your organization, providing a business reporting view for your selected Oracle services. Business Insight uses available data to provide insight and help decision making to address your business challenges.

The Business Insight functionality in Oracle Pulse uses two categories of metrics:

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) metrics provide high-level insight into a critical business measurement, such as inventory levels or accounts status. KPI metrics can be tracked visually via a Business Insight chart. In addition, thresholds and alerting can be configured for these KPI charts, assisting proactive tracking.
Detailed metrics are metrics associated with the KPI metric which provide further insight into any issues identified in the KPI chart. These metrics are visible via the table view. For example, if the KPI chart indicates that the percentage of accounts with the Open status is too high ahead of your Period-Close event, the table view can provide complementary data highlighting the name of the accounts, which geographical region they belong to, or who is a contact point in that region. Together, the KPI chart and the table view facilitate you in proactively tracking your key business objectives, and provide you with further insight to interpret the KPI measurements and to take data-driven action.

Accessing the Business Insight Dashboard

To access the Business Insight dashboard:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Click Business Insight in the navigation menu.

The Business Insight page opens.

Using the Performance Reports

Host and database metrics are tracked in Oracle Pulse using information drawn from Oracle^® Enterprise Manager. Available at Customer Level, these metrics allow you to see the load on different hosts and databases at a particular point in time.

Accessing the Performance Dashboard

To access the Performance dashboard:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Click Performance in the navigation menu, under Metrics.

The Performance dashboard opens.

Using the Self Healing Reports

Self Healing in Pulse consists of a set of proactive management techniques (automatic corrective actions) that help avert outages and service interruptions.

Corrective actions are scrips that proactively solve issues arising on customer environments and are performed at all levels: storage, host, database, mid tiers and front end.

Corrective actions are defined to apply targeted fixes for specific issue types. When an alert is generated, a corrective action can be run to resolve that possible issue. Corrective actions generally offer functional solutions, for example, when a tablespace has less than 10% free space, a corrective action is automatically run to extend that tablespace.

By default, information on the Self Healing Dashboard view is displayed for the current month, while information on the Self Healing List and Chart views is displayed for the past three months (current month included). For more information on how to display self healing data for the entire previous year, as well as self healing data in a particular month or period across the previous year, see the Generating Reports for Different Time Periods section in Working with Data.

Accessing and Navigating the Self Healing Dashboard

To access the Self Healing dashboard:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Click Self Healing in the navigation menu, under AIOps.

The Self Healing Dashboard page opens.
Click the icons in the upper left corner to acccess the views on the Self Healing dashboard:
- Click to access the Self Healing Dashboard view to analyze the corrective actions performed on your OCI environments.
- Click to access the Self Healing List view to view details for the performed corrective actions.
- Click to access the Self Healing Chart view to analyze corrective actions trends and daily counts.

Using the Incident Management Reports

The Incidents menu includes reports of service requests across all services and environments for all your services.

By default, information on the Incidents Dashboard view is displayed as of the current day, information on the Incidents List view is displayed for the current month, while information on the Incidents Chart view is displayed for three months prior to the current month. For information on how to change the report period, see the Generating Reports for Different Time Periods section in Working with Data.

Accessing and Navigating the Incidents Dashboard

The Incidents dashboard is available at both Customer and Service Level, and can be accessed as explained below:

Accessing and Navigating the Incidents Dashboard at Customer Level

Use the Incidents menu at Customer Level to see reports of service requests across all services and environments for all your services. To access the Incidents dashboard at Customer Level:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Click Incidents in the navigation menu, under Support.

The Incidents Dashboard page opens.
Click the icons in the upper left corner to acccess the tabs on the Incidents menu:
- Click to access the Incidents Dashboard view.
- Click to access the Incidents List view.
- Click to access the Incidents Chart view.

Accessing and Navigating the Incidents Dashboard at Service Level

Use the Incidents menu at Service Level to see SR reports for the selected service. To access the Incidents dashboard at Service Level:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Open the navigation menu and select the service you want to access.

The Availability Dashboard page at Service level opens.
Click Incidents in the Service Level navigation menu.

The Incidents Dashboard page opens.
Click the icons in the upper left corner to acccess the tabs on the Incidents menu:
- Click to access the Incidents Dashboard view.
- Click to access the Incidents List view.
- Click to access the Incidents Chart view.

Accessing Service Request Information for Environments

Use the Incidents menu to see SR reports for the selected environment. To access service request information for an environment:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Follow the steps in Accessing and Navigating the Incidents Dashboard at Service Level to access service request data for the selected service.
Click the List view icon ().

By default, data is shown for all the environments associated with the selected service.
Click the environment filter (), then select the Individual Environment option.
Select an environment from the drop-down list to see the relevant information for the environment of your focus.

Using the Change Management Reports

The Changes menu in the navigation menu includes reports of change requests across all services and environments for all your services.

By default, information on the Changes Dashboard view is displayed as of the current day, information on the Changes List view is displayed for the current month, while information on the Changes Chart view is displayed for three months prior to the current month. For information on how to change the report period, see the Generating Reports for Different Time Periods section in Working with Data.

Accessing and Navigating the Changes Dashboard

The Changes dashboard is available at both Customer and Service Level, and can be accessed as explained below:

Accessing and Navigating the Changes Dashboard at Customer Level

Use the Changes menu at Customer Level to see reports of change requests across all services and environments for all your services. To access the Changes dashboard at Customer Level:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Click Changes in the navigation menu, under Support.

The Changes Dashboard page opens.
Click the icons in the upper left corner to acccess the tabs on the Changes menu:
- Click to access the Changes Dashboard view.
- Click to access the Changes List view.
- Click to access the Changes Chart view.

Accessing and Navigating the Changes Dashboard at Service Level

Use the Changes menu at Service Level to see reports of change requests for the selected service. To access the Changes dashboard at Service Level:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Open the navigation menu and select the service you want to access.

The Availability Dashboard page at Service level opens.
Click Changes in the Service Level navigation menu.

The Changes Dashboard page opens.
Click the icons in the upper left corner to acccess the tabs on the Changes menu:
- Click to access the Changes Dashboard view.
- Click to access the Changes List view.
- Click to access the Changes Chart view.

Accessing Change Request Information for Environments

Use the Changes menu to see reports of change requests for the selected environment. To access change request information for an environment:

Sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in Accessing Oracle Pulse.

The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default.
Follow the steps in Accessing and Navigating the Changes Dashboard at Service Level to access change request data for the selected service.
Click the List view icon ().

By default, data is shown for all the environments associated with the selected service.
Click the environment filter (), then select the Individual Environment option.
Select an environment from the drop-down list to see the relevant information for the environment of your focus.