CONTROL-M Twitter Shout Script

Do you use BMC’s Control-M job scheduler? Are you a Twitter tweeter? Perhaps you’re looking for a way to get critical job status and messages from CONTROL-M to key staff but aren’t quite big enough (yet) to be able to afford something like Alarmpoint. Maybe you’re like me and just like to tinker with stuff and try new things!

The following perl script lets you setup a shout destination table in Control-M to perform “DO SHOUT” statements to a specific Twitter account. It’s simple, and currently only one-way communication from Control-M to Twitter, but I am working on getting two-way communication setup so that you could do things like reply back from Twitter to re-run a job or ask for the SYSOUT of a job to be emailed to you at a specified address. If you have any questions or suggestions please drop me a line!

Download the Control-M to Twitter Script Here!

Using the Script

Make sure you have Perl installed on your system. You’ll also need to make sure you have the LWP and Data packages available. These are usually installed by default with most Perl installations.

Save the perl script to a directory on the Control-M/Server machine. Now go into ctm_menu and access option #6 (Parameter Customization) -> Option #3 -> Option #1. You are going to setup a new shout destination. It’s a (P)rogram that runs on the (S)erver and you will need to assign it a logical name and specify the path to the perl script.

You’re ready to rock and roll!

Chris Harbert

Nice work Robert. Is Perl the required language for writing custom Control-M shouts, or are there options? As a side note, you're indexed as #3 on Google when searching for “Control-M Shout”.

http://www.robertstinnett.com Robert Stinnett

Hey Chris,

Shout destinations can be either a program, an e-mail destination, or to the IOALOG or console in Control-M. They are mechanisms where basically you can let your imagination run wild. For instance, I have written one that lets you SHOUT to Patrol and it basically hooks into the Alarmpoint system for notifcations, etc.

They do not have to be written in Perl — it was just the language of my choice at the time. You can use whatever you fancy. It can be a scripting language or a COM/EXE file written in whatever you choose.

There are some limitations, though. For example, SHOUT lets you pass a parameters to it, but it combined them all into one big “blob” meaning you have to seperate them out on the destination side.

Hit me up if you want to know more and I can give you a guided tour!

Robert

http://www.facebook.com/FussyJoe Funso Oje

Hi Robert,

I'm not so good in Control-M (a beginner actually) but I have some experience in .NET programming.
Can you send such SHOUTs to a Web Service, or a Windows Service?

It would be great to know that I can integrate Control-M with my other applications.

http://www.robertstinnett.com Robert Stinnett

Hey there Funso,

Basically if you can call it via command line you can use it as a Shout Destination.

When you start talking about Web Services and such you should consider looking into BMC Business Process Integration Suite (http://www.bmc.com/products/product-listing/388…) which allows you to interact directly with web services, JAVA libraries and a host of other “Web 2.0″ technologies. I'd be glad to tell you more about this and how we have used it if you wish. Drop me a line!

Robert

http://www.robertstinnett.com Robert Stinnett

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Robert Stinnett

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