General Preferences

The General Preferences page is where you enter and view licensing information for SiteScope. It is also the default page that is displayed when you click the Preferences button on the main SiteScope navigation menu.

This section describes:

About the General Preferences Page
Working with General Preferences Settings
Built-in Web Server
Serving SiteScope through an external Web server

About the General Preferences Page

The General Preferences page itself is where you enter or change your SiteScope license information, enter license keys for any optional monitor features, and enable or disable several SiteScope display options. As the default preference page, it also provides access to a number of other pages that you use to set various preferences for SiteScope. This includes E-mail, Pager, Log, and User account configurations.

You also use the General Preferences page to use a Web server other than the built-in server which is part of the SiteScope package. If you choose to use the SiteScope server, you can specify a port and access privileges for the server so you can restrict access to SiteScope. If you choose not to use the native SiteScope Web server and instead want to use a stand-alone Web server, you will need to refer to the instructions for how to set up your server to serve SiteScope pages.

Working with General Preferences Settings

Use the entry fields on the General Preferences as described below. Click the Save Changes button located at the bottom of the page to record the changes. You will be returned the SiteScope main page.

License Number

Enter your SiteScope license number to register your SiteScope monitors. This number is issued to you when you purchase a set of monitors. You must purchase a license if you intend to use SiteScope beyond the trial period.

License Status

This line displays information about the license as entered in the License Number box above. This includes the total number of monitor points permitted by the license and how many points have been used plus a label for any optional monitor license keys entered below.

Option Licenses

If you have purchased licensing for optional SiteScope monitoring capability , enter the license number in this text box. Normally, this license key will have a syntax similar to the SiteScope license entered above. If you have purchased multiple license keys, enter each key separated with a comma.

Options Enabled

If you have entered licensing for one or more optional SiteScope monitors, the labels of the enabled monitor types are displayed.

Note: SiteScope may need to be restarted before some optional monitor types become available on the Add Monitor page.

Enable locale-specific display of date and time

You select this option to have SiteScope display dates and times in the default locale format. If this option is not set, then the US locale is used.

If you want to over-ride the default locale used by SiteScope:

Edit the master.config file in the <SiteScope install path>/SiteScope/groups directory.
Find the entry "_localeCountry=", and assign it an uppercase 2-character ISO-3166 country code. You can find a full list of these codes at a number of sites, such as http://www.chemie.fu-berlin.de/diverse/doc/ISO_3166.html. For example: _localeCountry=US
Find the entry "_localeLanguage=", and assign it a lowercase 2-character ISO-639 language code. You can find a full list of these codes at a number of sites, such as http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/http/related/iso639.txt. For example: _localeLanguage=en
Save the master.config file, and then restart the SiteScope service.

International Version

Check this option to enable International character sets. When this option is checked, SiteScope honors all character encodings. You use this option to instruct SiteScope to simultaneously handle character encodings from multiple sources and operating systems. If not checked, only the encoding of the operating system where SiteScope is installed is used.

Number of backups per file:

Enter the number of SiteScope configuration file backups that you want to keep. This feature is to help preserve important monitor, alert, and general SiteScope configuration information (for example, the files in the <SiteScope install path>/SiteScope/groups directory). This number represents that number of backups per file that will be maintained. SiteScope will use a naming convention of filename.bak.1, filename.bak.2, ... filename.bak.#, where 1 is the latest backup file.

Enable Operator Acknowledgement Functionality

Check this box to enable the optional monitor status acknowledgement feature. This option will add an extra column to each monitor group table labeled Ack. This column contains an acknowledgement icon which, when clicked, provides an entry box to create a comment or note associated with the monitor. This note or comment is then available to other users as a floating tool-tip for group communication. The comment text is cleared from the interface when the monitor changes from one state to another. The acknowledgement notes are also recorded in the SiteScope\logs\Operator.log file.

Alert Icons

Check this box to enable the display of alert information for groups and monitors. This will add an extra column to each monitor group table labeled Alert. An alert indicator icon is also added to the upper right hand side of the group detail page as well as the SiteScope main panel to indicate if alerts are configured for that context. This alert indicator icon when clicked, opens the Edit page for the applicable Alert definition. If more than one alert is associated with the monitor or group clicking the alert icon opens the Alert list page. If no alert is directly associated with the monitor or group clicking the alert icon opens the Add Alert page.

Report Icons

Check this box to enable the display of report information for groups and monitors. This will add an extra column to each monitor group table labeled Report. An report indicator icon is also added to the upper right hand side of the group detail page to indicate if reports are configured for that context. This report indicator icon when clicked, opens the Edit page for the applicable Report definition. If more than one report is associated with the monitor or group clicking the icon opens the Report list page. If no alert is directly associated with the monitor or group clicking the report icon opens the Quick Report page.

Groups per Row

Enter the number of top-level monitor groups should be displayed in the SiteScope main panel. In previous versions of SiteScope this was fixed to three groups per row. Depending on the length of group names being used, it is recommended that you use a value between 2 and 6.

Blue Gauges

Check this box to enable display of SiteScope blue status gauges. This is a legacy feature from earlier SiteScope versions.

Built-in Web Server

IP Addresses Allowed Access

You can restrict the IP addresses that are allowed access to the SiteScope Web server by entering which IP addresses should be allowed access. You can use a wildcard at the end of the IP address to indicate a range of addresses. For example, 206.168.191.* allows access to the 206.168.191 subnet.

Note: To restrict access to this SiteScope instance to the IP address(s) entered here you must also check the Require both IP address and Login option below.

Require both IP address and Login

Selecting this option adds further security by restricting SiteScope access to users who have both a correct username/password and an allowed IP address. With this option checked, users who try to access SiteScope on this server will be presented with a login screen. Only those accessing SiteScope from the allowed IP addresses will be able to view SiteScope.

Note: For effective access control to this SiteScope you should also create user accounts and be sure that each user account has a login name and password assigned to it.

SiteScope Port

Enter the port on which the SiteScope server should be accessed. By default, this port value is normally set to 8888 and the access method is HTTP. You can change this to be some other available port number.

You can also set up SiteScope to be accessible via Secure HTTP (HTTPS). To do this you will have to obtain and install a digital certificate on the SiteScope server. You will also have to define a port number for the SiteScope _httpSecurePort parameter. Leaving the SiteScope Port box blank will have one of two effects. If the _httpSecurePort parameter is defined, leaving the SiteScope Port empty will force all access to the SiteScope server to be Secure HTTP connections. If the _httpSecurePort parameter is not defined, and no valid port is entered in the SiteScope Port box, the SiteScope Web server will not start and will not serve the SiteScope Web pages. Use this option if you want to use another Web server to serve SiteScope pages. Refer to the instructions for how to set up a stand-alone server.

Serving SiteScope through an external Web server

Static HTML pages: Selecting this option tells SiteScope to write out HTML files. You can use this option to control access to SiteScope information from a separate Web server application. You may choose to use this option if you need to use special security options supported by your Web server.
Web Server Address: Enter the name or the IP address of the machine on which SiteScope is installed. For example, you could enter either the machine's IP address, as in 206.168.191.44, or you could enter the machine's name. as in trout.thiscompany.com. This information is used for providing links to SiteScope management report pages in your management summary e-mail.

Click the Save Changes button to complete the action.