Cool Tools to help manage ITIM

One of our friends at IBM let us in on these two handy tools for ITIM Administrators. The Graphical Configuration Editor (GCE) is an Eclipse based tool that will connect to your ITIM Server and download all of the objects, workflow, policies, etc... into an ICE Project. In the GCE you can develop your ITIM environment and then import your changes back into ITIM. This seems like a really good tool to use when testing things out in Development, then moving to Test region, and then again to Production. This way you do not have to do everything by hand multiple times as you move from development to production. This tool installs on Unix or Windows environments and is generally used on your development workstation.

The other tool ITIM DocTool must be installed directly on the ITIM Server. It works for Unix or Windows environments and will read your entire ITIM Configuration into either an HTML or an XML file. This is pretty cool, because if you walk into an environment you are unfamiliar with you can just run this tool and review the associated documentation to get an understanding of the environment. It's also a useful tool in tech support scenarios where IBM Tech Support needs to understand how things are set up.

You can find these tools at http://www-18.lotus.com/wps/portal/tim . It happens to be currently in the new column over on the right hand side of the web page and can be downloaded from there. BTW, there is a really nice flash demo of the GCE. I attached it here in the downloads.

Now the only problem I had was with the GCE. I installed it fine and can run the tool. Note that you must be using an IBM JRE for it to work. I could create a new project and specify the ITIM Server properties so that the GCE can connect to ITIM. However, when I click File -> Import then choose the project to import to, enter the user name and password for itim manager, the CGE connects to the ITIM Server then just stops. I cannot click Next as expected and there is a message in the dialog box that says "Properties.properties". See the screen below:


There is a log file available. If you Cancel the import dialog, then from the main GCE window click Help -> About GCE, then click Configuration Details there is a button for the error log:


So the error I'm getting is this:

!SESSION 2007-01-12 10:40:50.379 -----------------------------------------------
eclipse.buildId=unknown
java.fullversion=J2RE 1.5.0 IBM J9 2.3 Windows XP x86-32 j9vmwi3223-20060222a (JIT enabled)
J9VM - 20060220_05389_lHdSMR
JIT - 20060220_2133_r8
GC - 20060214_AA
BootLoader constants: OS=win32, ARCH=x86, WS=win32, NL=en_US
Command-line arguments: -os win32 -ws win32 -arch x86

!ENTRY 1.2.2 4 0 2007-01-12 10:56:52.553
!MESSAGE Unexpected Exception
!STACK 0
com.ibm.itim.apps.exception.AppProcessingException: Properties.properties
at com.ibm.itim.apps.UserAuthInfo.(UserAuthInfo.java:224)
at com.ibm.itim.apps.UserAuthInfo.(UserAuthInfo.java:205)


I started poking around the Server Configuration Properties and I noticed that there is a Server Type property. When you click that drop down there seems to be different types depending on which FixPack you are running on your ITIM.



I initially chose the item without a fixpack, even though I am running FixPack 28. FP28 isn't a choice in the Server Type property. I tried a few of the options and it did not make a difference. 1st of all I don't even know if this is my problem, but if it is then I guess I'll have to wait until IBM releases an update. It appears that you can't get support for either of these two tools because they are on an as is basis.