Unica Director - ActiveMQ Configuration for Flowchart Monitoring

Unica Director provides the users with the capabilities to monitor Campaign flowcharts. This allows the user to see flowchart execution data like (running, stopped, paused, completed, failed), etc. Additionally, the user can see the details like start time, end time, and the time taken by each process box execution. Monitoring also allows the user to check the query execution underlying to each process box.

This blog explains – How flowchart execution details become available in Marketing Software Director using Active MQ?

Before we start discussing on how to configure ActiveMQ, I suggest taking a look at preparations that are needed beforehand. You can refer to blog – How to get ready to install Unica Director?

How it happens?

Flowchart execution data is important for the marketer to plan flowchart execution activities better. A marketer needs a lot of details to be on top of execution monitoring. Moreover, this information also allows the marketer to resolve the execution failures and tune the flowchart executions better. This vital information consists of:

1. List of all flowchart being executed
2. Flowchart execution start/end time
3. Flowchart execution status (running, stopped, paused, completed, failed, etc.)
4. Flowchart process boxes execution statues
5. Process box execution start time / end time
6. Underlying queries being executed and time is taken by each database query in process box execution

This information is primarily available with Campaign application (with Campaign analytical server). To share this information with Director, it is internally passed from Campaign analytical server to Campaign Web application. Irrespective of if the user has configured Director, or not this information would be available with Campaign web application. Campaign web application can share this information via message queue (in this case, Active MQ).

This does not have any restriction on the user to configure Active MQ on Campaign web application. Active MQ can be installed on any machine. The campaign provides new configurations to mention the Active MQ broker URL and connection details. Using these configurations, Campaign web application connects to the broker URL of Active MQ and push the messages on the message queue. Once the messages are pushed in the message queue, these become available in the Director application. While installing Director application, the user should specify the Active MQ details (these can be determined after the installation as well). Using this Active MQ details Director application receives all messages pushed by Campaign web application. These all information gets stored in the Director system tables for further use.

Data flow:

Active MQ Installation and configuration:

Marketing Software Director is certified using Apache Active MQ v5.15.x. Apache Active MQ is not bundled nor delivered along with Unica Director, the user will need to download/procure from the Apache Active MQ web page (https://activemq.apache.org/)

Apache Active MQ installation and configuration requirements for Director are fundamental. Please find below steps to get started with basic Active MQ install and configuration:

1. Download Apache Active MQ from Apache Active MQ web page (https://activemq.apache.org/components/classic/download/)
2. Extract Active MQ on local file system, e.g.: “/opt/apache-activemq-5.15.7”
3. Open “activemq.bat” or .sh file available under “/opt/apache-activemq-5.15.7/bin” directory and check “DEFAULT_ACTIVEMQ_HOME” is set correctly.
4. By default Active MQ broken URL and ports are mentioned under “/opt/apache-activemq-5.15.7/conf/activemq.xml”. The Default port is 61616.

How to start Apache Active MQ:

1. Navigate to “/opt/apache-activemq-5.15.7/bin”
2. Execute command – “activemq start.”
3. On the terminal window/command prompt Active MQ is started, and console output is displayed.
4. You can check the Active MQ broker url which is open to receive message. Usually this broker url is like – tcp://<HOSTNAME>:61616

Please note – this broken url needs to be exactly same as mentioned in the console logs:

INFO | KahaDB is version 6

 INFO | PListStore:[C:\apache-activemq-5.15.7\bin\..\data\localhost\tmp_storage] started

 INFO | Apache ActiveMQ 5.15.7 (localhost, ID:LP1-AP-51708046-54785-1567055785936-0:1) is starting

 INFO | Listening for connections at: tcp://LP1-AP-51708046:61616?maximumConnections=1000&wireFormat.maxFrameSize=104857600

 INFO | Connector openwire started

 INFO | Listening for connections at: amqp://LP1-AP-51708046:5672?maximumConnections=1000&wireFormat.maxFrameSize=104857600

 INFO | Connector amqp started

 INFO | Listening for connections at: stomp://LP1-AP-51708046:61613?maximumConnections=1000&wireFormat.maxFrameSize=104857600

 INFO | Connector stomp started

 INFO | Listening for connections at: mqtt://LP1-AP-51708046:1883?maximumConnections=1000&wireFormat.maxFrameSize=104857600

 INFO | Connector mqtt started

 INFO | Starting Jetty server

 INFO | Creating Jetty connector

 WARN | ServletContext@o.e.j.s.ServletContextHandler@76f4b65{/,null,STARTING} has uncovered http methods for path: /

 INFO | Listening for connections at ws://LP1-AP-51708046:61614?maximumConnections=1000&wireFormat.maxFrameSize=104857600

 INFO | Connector ws started

 INFO | Apache ActiveMQ 5.15.7 (localhost, ID:LP1-AP-51708046-54785-1567055785936-0:1) started

 INFO | For help or more information please see: https://activemq.apache.org

 WARN | Store limit is 102400 mb (current store usage is 19 mb). The data directory: C:\apache-activemq-5.15.7\bin\..\data\kahadb only has 17906 mb of usable space. – resetting to maximum available disk space: 17906 mb

 WARN | Temporary Store limit is 51200 mb (current store usage is 0 mb). The data directory: C:\apache-activemq-5.15.7\bin\..\data only has 17886 mb of usable space. – resetting to maximum available disk space: 17886 mb

 INFO | No Spring WebApplicationInitializer types detected on classpath

 INFO | ActiveMQ WebConsole available at https://0.0.0.0:8161/

 INFO | ActiveMQ Jolokia REST API available at https://0.0.0.0:8161/api/jolokia/

 INFO | Initializing Spring FrameworkServlet ‘dispatcher‘

You can check the Active MQ configuration and installation by trying logging in to Active MQ application using Active MQ webconsole url: https://<HOSTNAME>:8161/

Default credentials to login to web console are – admin/admin

Active MQ configurations in Campaign configuration:

In Campaign configuration user, can specify configuration which enables the user to publish the flowchart events to Active MQ. Also, the user can specify Active MQ broker configurations.

Please follow the below steps to perform these configurations:

1. Login to Campaign and navigate to Settings > Configuration
2. Navigate to configuration settings: Settings for ‘FlowchartEvents’ (Affinium|Campaign|FlowchartEvents)
3. Set enableEvents = Yes.
4. Navigate to configuration settings: Settings for ‘ActiveMQ’ (Affinium|Campaign|FlowchartEvents|ActiveMQ)
5. Set configurations as:
   1. url = tcp://<HOSTNAME>:61616
   2. Platform User with Data Sources for ActiveMQ Credentials = asm_admin
   3. Data Source For ActiveMQ message broker credentials = ACTIVEMQ_CRED_DS
   4. queueName = flowchartInfo-campaign

Its recommended not to change the “queueName” configuration parameter. User will need to add data source as mentioned under configuration parameter “Data Source For ActiveMQ message broker credentials” for user mentioned under “Platform User with Data Sources for ActiveMQ Credentials”.

After these configurations are performed, Campaign web application needs to be restarted. I hope this helps with installation and configuration of Active MQ with Campaign and Director application. Please post in comments if you have any questions around this.