Document: 8600

FAQ for TPM
TPM
Version / Authors / Date / Comments
1.8 / Guenter Grein / 14/052009 / Updated broken links and content of 8602
1.7 / Guenter Grein / 06/10/2008 / Updated content of 8627
1.6 / Guenter Grein / 09/07/2008 / Updated content of 8606
1.5 / Guenter Grein / 09/04/2008 / Added content to 8619
1.4 / Alistair Mills / 17/03/2008 / Added content to 8628; updated content
1.3 / Guenter Grein / 27/02/2007 / Added content to 8627; updated content
1.2 / Min Tsai/ Alistair Mills / 13/11/2006 / Added content to 8608, 8609, 8613, 8614
1.1 / Alistair Mills / 04/07/2006 / Added content to 8606
0.6 / Alistair Mills / 24/08/2005 / Added 8618-8623, and made minor corrections
0.5 / Torsten Antoni / 10/08/2005 / Minor corrections
0.4 / Flavia Donno / 07/08/2005 / Add other questions
0.1 / Alistair Mills / 20/05/2005 / First draft

8601 What is the purpose of TPM?

8602 How many tickets have to be dealt with by TPM each week?

8603 How does a ticket arrive for TPM?

8604 What does the ROC manager have to do?

8605 What does the GGUS manager have to do?

8606 What does the person dealing with TPM have to do?

8607 How does the handover from one TPM to the next TPM happen?

8608 Where is the schedule for TPM?

8609 How is the schedule determined?

8610 What documentation is available?

8611 What if I have questions which are not dealt with by this FAQ?

8612 What should TPM do in case he/she does not know the procedure to follow?

8613 How does TPM add content to the Wiki pages or to the knowledge database?

8614 How should TPM notify the user about the status of a ticket?

8615 To whom should TPM assign tickets reporting site problems?

8616 Should TPM process tickets coming from site functional tests and CIC on Duty?

8617 How do I contact one of the support teams in a ROC?

8618 How can I determine which ROC is associated with a site?

8619 How can I determine which site is associated with a ROC?

8620 How can I determine the status of a site?

8621 How can I determine the status of a site which is down?

8622 How can I determine the status of a VO?

8623 How can I send a query to more than one ROC?

8624 How can I contact a resource centre directly?

8625 How can I find out which mailing list is used and who is on that mailing list?

8626 How shall I handle spam tickets?

8627 How do the ticket states relate to the work flow?

Item / Question
Answer /
8601 / What is the purpose of TPM?
TPM is the most important part of the support system for the grid. TPM is ticket process management.
The purpose of TPM is:
- to close simple trouble tickets;
- to notify users about the status of their tickets;
- to ensure that other tickets are sent to the correct place for processing;
- to react to alarms that tickets have not been processed;
- to ensure that the knowledge base and Wiki pages are enhanced by the responses associated with tickets;
- to rotate its operation among the participating ROCs in a timely, co-operative and informative way.
8602 / How many tickets have to be dealt with by TPM each week?
Since January 2009, GGUS allows Direct Site Notification for all tickets, i.e. cases transparent to TPMs, directly assigned to the relevant ROC and emailed to the Site. TPMs have less submitted tickets to handle. Some quality work items are added instead, namely:
A. Identify inactive tickets and act on them. The weekly escalation reports help to do this (https://gus.fzk.de/pages/metrics/download_escalation_reports.php).
B. Identify tickets revealing middleware bugs, open the relevant savannah entry and inter-link the 2 URLs using the fields foreseen for this purpose.
C. Act on submitter’s 2nd and 3rd call for GGUS ticket escalation. http://goc.grid.sinica.edu.tw/gocwiki/TPM/Escalated_Tickets explains what this means.
8603 / How does a ticket arrive for TPM?
The ticket flow in GGUS is described in other GGUS documents. Tickets can come from a number of sources. However TPM receives e-mails which include links to the tickets which are to be dealt with.
The most likely route is that a user has submitted an email to . If this is the case, the person dealing with TPM should read the ticket carefully before deciding to route it to someone else for processing. There are various tools to assist the person doing TPM with his task. These are described elsewhere.
Another common route is that one of the responsible units has referred the ticket to TPM for management. It is important that the person read the history of the ticket before deciding what to do with it. Simply sending it back to where it came from is not usually helpful.
Another common route is that a time alarm has gone off and TPM has received an alert.
8604 / What does the ROC manager have to do?
The ROC manager has to ensure that someone with suitable skills, experience and time is available for the week when his ROC has responsibility for TPM.
8605 / What does the GGUS manager have to do?
The GGUS manager is responsible for many things in GGUS including reliable operations of the system. However, in the context of this document, he is responsible for the following:
- publishing the schedule in advance and ensuring that the ROC manager who will be responsible for TPM is aware of his responsibilities one week in advance;
- monitoring that the handover of responsibility takes place on the first working day of each week, typically each Monday;
- making the appropriate changes to the routing tables in GGUS;
- updating the knowledge database or Wiki pages by using the responses associated with tickets, whenever this action is triggered by TPM or by other supporter units.
8606 / What does the person dealing with TPM have to do?
The arrival of a ticket is described in question 8603. The person dealing with TPM is expected to do the following:
- to close simple trouble tickets;
- to notify users about the status of their tickets;
- to check the ticket category field and classify the ticket if necessary;
- to ensure that other tickets are sent to the correct place for processing;
- to react to alarms that tickets have not been processed;
- to ensure that the knowledge base or Wiki pages (http://goc.grid.sinica.edu.tw/gocwiki/FrontPage) are enhanced by the responses associated with tickets;
- to rotate the operation of TPM among the participating ROCs in a timely, co-operative and informative way.
When dealing with a ticket, the following is the basic work-flow:
1.  Change support unit to "TPM" if you are working on a ticket;
2.  Typing a comment into public diary field causes an email to the user automatically.
3.  Change status to "waiting for reply" while waiting for the user's reply (or the reply of any other person);
4.  Be careful when using the field "Assign ticket to one person". Please avoid using mailing list names, or the mail list address of a remote helpdesk system. With a mailing list, the mail may not reach the recipient because many mailing lists are closed lists and will not accept the message. Sending mail to a remote helpdesk system can confuse the remote system and lead to trouble.
8607 / How does the handover from one TPM to the next TPM happen?
On Mondays at 12:00 o'clock UTC the mail address for the forwarding address of tickets assigned to TPM changes automatically to the next name in the schedule. The handover from one TPM to another takes place on Monday afternoon, after the mail addresses have changed.
TPM simply generates a ticket in GGUS with a title such as:
Handover of TPM from ROC-IT 16-May 2005
If there is information about outstanding issues which has to be communicated from one week to the following, then TPM should put this information into the body of the ticket. For example tickets may appear over the weekend. If TPM has not dealt with these, TPM should tell the new TPM in the handover ticket.
TPM then assigns the ticket to TPM. This causes the ticket notification to be sent to the new TPM. The new TPM simply marks the ticket as solved. In this way, the new TPM acknowledges that they have taken over responsibility for being TPM for the next week.
In addition, the responsibility for being TPM is discussed at the Grid Operations' meeting on Monday afternoons.
8608 / Where is the schedule for TPM?
The schedule is on the web at the following address:
https://gus.fzk.de/pages/tpm.php
The draft schedule is also on the web at the following address:
http://goc.grid.sinica.edu.tw/gocwiki/TPM_Scheduling_Proposal
8609 / How is the schedule determined?
The schedule of TPM has been created and agreed by the ROC managers' group. ROC managers may trade weeks with one another provided that they inform the GGUS manager at least one week before they are due to be TPM. If they make a change to the schedule they should create a ticket in GGUS and assign it to the ROC to whom they have transferred responsibility. When the ROC taking on responsibility receives the ticket, they change the status to solved. In this way, they acknowledge they have accepted responsibility for being TPM for the week in question. Emails should also be sent to:
and .
8610 / What documentation is available?
The documentation is available at the following location:
https://gus.fzk.de/pages/ggus-docs.php
The documents have numbers from 1000 onwards in steps of 100. The documents of most relevance are the following:
1100 Tutorial on GGUS HelpDesk System
1200 GGUS Workflows
1300 Short guide for the support staff
8600 FAQ on the operation of TPM (this document)
9100 GGUS Support Model
8611 / What if I have questions which are not dealt with by this FAQ?
You should decide if your question is
·  a procedural matter;
·  you require technical support.
For a procedural matter, you can ask a question by submitting a ticket to GGUS via the GGUS portal or you can send mail to .
Additionally there is a helpline available on the following number:
+49 724 782 8383.
If you require technical support, then you should send an e-mail to:

8612 / What should TPM do in case he/she does not know the procedure to follow?
In case TPM does not know the details of a procedure to follow while handling a ticket, he/she can always send e-mail to to receive assistance.
The TPM can also refer to this wiki page: http://goc.grid.sinica.edu.tw/gocwiki/TPM
8613 / How does TPM add content to the Wiki pages or to the knowledge database?
TPM may request that the content of a ticket be reported in the Wiki pages or in the knowledge database because the solution is of general interest.
The TPM uses the "Add to Wiki" radio button and this will send a FAQ creation request to GGUS. Please make sure the solution field contains all the information that is required for the wiki. This means the solution should not only describe how to solve the problem, but clearly describe the problem itself. After GGUS creates the FAQ, a link to the new FAQ will be sent to the TPM email list for review and confirmation.
8614 / How should TPM notify the user about the status of a ticket?
When TPM receives a ticket and starts to work on it, he/she must notify the user that his/her problem is being looked at. TPM can use the ”Public Diary” which triggers an email to the user on every update. He can also notify other supporters or involve other parties using the fields in the forms. More than one e-mail address can be used in a field. Several e-mail addresses must be separated by “;”
8615 / To whom should TPM assign tickets reporting site problems?
They should be assigned to the ROC in charge of the site. Site administrators, in fact, only deal with the local ticketing systems. They are usually not registered as supporters in the GGUS system.
8616 / Should a TPM process tickets coming from site functional tests and CIC-on-Duty?
No. A TPM should ignore tickets with “Type of problem: COD Operations” or tickets issued by the CIC. In fact the EGEE SA1 Operations group has defined procedures to solve these tickets. TPM receives these tickets for information only.
8617 / How do I contact one of the support teams in a ROC?
If you click on the following link, then you will see a map. If you click on a region, then an email is generated with the email address completed for you. You then have to write the body of the email.
https://cic.in2p3.fr/index.php?id=rc&js_status=2
8618 / How can I determine which ROC is associated with a site?
This information is kept in GOC DB: https://goc.gridops.org/site
For OSG site information is available at https://oim.grid.iu.edu/pub/resource/show.php. OSG Atlas sites and CMS sites are the most relevant in EGEE context.
Keep in mind that some OSG resources are not within the US borders.
Taiwan: osgc01.grid.sinica.edu.tw
Europe: rhilxs.ph.bham.ac.uk
South America: osgce.hepgrid.uerj.br, osg-ce.sprace.org.br, osg-se.sprace.org.br
[At the time of writing this FAQ, a replacement page is on test at the following URL:
https://lxb2001.cern.ch:8443/sft/lastreport.cgi Ed]
8619 / How can I determine which site is associated with a ROC?
See 8618.
8620 / How can I determine the status of a site?
See 8618.
8621 / How can I determine the status of a site which is down?
Click on the following link: