Understanding Health Assessments
A health assessment record captures the environment's score for a given condition at a given point in time. Health assessment records are calculated and captured periodically to assess an environment health over time.
Health assessment type describes a health condition that should be measured and evaluated over time along with remediation instructions for completeness. The condition may be classified as being critical or not and it is assigned a category for reporting purposes.
The definition specifies the calculation rule for measuring the condition along with settings that determine whether it is eligible for the current environment or not.
This section describes topics related to designing and reviewing health assessments.
Eligibility Rules
A health assessment condition may only be applicable in certain environments and not others. For example, a condition that should only be checked in a production environment or is only applicable in a cloud installation, etc. By default, a health assessment type is considered eligible in any environment unless explicitly defined otherwise.
For a cloud implementation, the system looks at the applicable cloud offerings setting on the health assessment type. If that is populated with specific cloud offerings, then the assessment type is only applicable if your product is in the list. (If no applicable cloud offerings are populated, then it's considered applicable for all cloud offerings.)
The health assessment calculation algorithm, referenced on the health assessment type definition, may further determine that the assessment type is not eligible for the current environment.
Capturing Health Assessments
The health assessment type monitor batch process, which is used to calculate and store assessments, is scheduled as an internal batch process in the cloud.
Implementations that are on premises may also choose to run the health assessment type's monitor batch control to capture information for viewing in the Health Assessment Dashboard portal if desired.
- Basic eligibility rules are evaluated, such as whether this is a cloud or production environment, etc. If the assessment type is not eligible it is skipped.
- The calculation algorithm is called. If the algorithm indicates the assessment type is not eligible it is skipped.
- If an exception occurred while calling the algorithm, i.e. a measured value could not be calculated, the assessment score is set to Exception and the assessment record records the exception details.
- If the algorithm did not score the measured value, and a scoring range is defined on the assessment type, the value is scored accordingly. Scoring the measured value is required and if it cannot be scored an exception is issued.
- If the algorithm did not provide the percentage to failure value, it is calculated based on the assessment score and the scoring range defined on the assessment type.
- The assessment record is stored along with any optional characteristics provided by the algorithm.
Health Assessment Score
The measured assessment value is scored as either Pass, Warning or Fail to describe the severity of the condition. In addition, a Percentage to Failure value is also provided to indicate how close the measured value is from a failure score as a proactive alert mechanism. A pass score is set to 0% and a failed score to 100%.
The algorithm associated with the assessment type is responsible for computing a measured value. It may also provide a score for the measurement and calculate its percentage to failure value.
If the algorithm did not score the value, the system uses the scoring range defined on the assessment type to score the calculated value. A value less than or equal to the pass limit is set with a 'pass' value and if greater or equal to the 'fail' limit then is set to 'fail'. Any value is between is scored with 'warning' value. If a scoring range is not defined the assessment is scored with a 'warning' value.
For example, if an assessment type is defined with a maximum pass value of 7 and a minimum failure value of 11 then a measured value of 5 would be scored as 'pass', a value of 9 as 'waring' and a value of 11 as 'fail'. In the same way, if a percentage to failure is not set by the algorithm, the system calculates it based on the same range. A value scored as warning is set with a higher percentage to failure the close it is to the fail limit. If a scoring range is not defined the default is 0 as percentage to fail.
Assessment Calculation Algorithm
The health assessment type definition references a processing algorithm for calculating the condition's measurement value and scoring it. If the algorithm does not score the value, settings on the assessment type may be used to do so.
Basic eligibility rules are defined on the assessment type definition. For more specific rules, the algorithm may also determine that the assessment is not eligible for the current environment and therefore should be skipped.
The algorithm may provide basic supporting details as characteristics to display along with the assessment.
The product provides generic assessment algorithms that can be used to simplify the configuration of basic assessment types. For example, an algorithm that gets a measurement value labeled as 'count' from an SQL provided as an parameter. The measured value is scored by comparing it against the scoring range defined on the assessment type. Refer to product health assessment types for examples.
Launching A More Information Portal
An assessment type may be associated with an optional portal for reviewing specific details about an assessment. When specified, the health assessment portal provides navigation to the specific portal along with the health assessment identifier as context. This is an optional configuration and most likely needed to clarify complex assessment conditions.
Review Assessments
The Health Assessment Dashboard portal provides a high level summary of health assessment conditions. It is recommended to review this portal periodically and address highlighted issues as needed.
Health assessment types provided by the base product cannot be disabled. Customers can mark certain product assessment types to be hidden from this dashboard display. These are still assessed and collected but a user may choose to view them or not on this dashboard. The user may drill into a Health Assessment portal for more information about a given rule over time. When applicable, the user may also further navigate to the specific portal associated with the rule.
No Custom Business Objects
Health assessment functionality relies on base product business objects for core functionality. There is no support for custom business objects nor customization of the base product's business objects. Customers can add assessment types with custom calculation rules but the assessment type and assessment entities must be based on product business objects.