How to start and stop Contact Expert server components remotely

Important

Remote management for Contact Expert server components is available from 7.2 version of Contact Expert.

Sometimes Contact Expert deployment administrators need to restart the server components to do some maintenance. This can be done with CE Server Agent on the application servers, but from 7.2 it also can be done from remotely with the help of PowerShell cmdlets.

To be able to remotely manage the Contact Expert servers, you need to install the ContactExpertRemoteManagement PowerShell module and you need to have a deployment administrator user in the Contact Expert deployment.

How to install Contact Expert Remote Management PowerShell module

The ContactExpertRemoteManagement module can be installed from PowerShell Gallery.

1. Make sure you have Windows PowerShell 5.1+, PowerShell Core 6 or PowerShell 7 installed on your machine.
2. Use Get-PSRepository command to check that PSGallery is registered as a module repository. If not please register the repository first.
3. Install the ContactExpertRemoteManagement module with Install-Module -Name ContactExpertRemoteManagement command.
4. When the module is successfully installed, you can use it after importing that with Import-Module ContactExpertRemoteManagement command.

Verify you have a deployment level Contact Expert user

Open the Contact Expert Portal, search for your user in the User Account menu and verify that the user has Full access in the Hierarchy. Then on the Effective permission tab, verify that the user has full access to the Domains resource.

Server management guide

Every cmdlets in the ContactExpertRemoteManagement module has a CE prefix in its name. To see all available cmdlets in the module, use Get-Command -Module ContactExpertRemoteManagement command. To view the detail of a cmdlet, you can use the standard Get-Help [CommandName] -Full command.

Connect to Management Service

In order to be able to use the management commands, you first need to connect to the Contact Expert Management Service with the Connect-CEManagementService cmdlet. As ManagementServiceUrl parameter, use the public address of the Contact Expert Management Service from one server in the deployment. As Credential use the Contact Expert deployment level user. Make sure you are using the UseWinAuth switch, when the Contact Expert Management Service is set to use Windows Authentication.

To check the connection state, you can use the Get-CEManagementServiceConnection command. With the Disconnect-CEManagementService command, you can close the connection.

Server components status check

Note

Opened Management Service connection is required to use this cmdlet!

You can view the state of servers and status of server components on the servers in a given Contact Expert domain with the Get-CEServerStates cmdlet. You need to specify the DomainId parameter to define which domain's status would like to retrieve. To get all available domains, use the Get-CEDomains cmdlet.

The Get-CEServerStates cmdlet returns a DomainState type object, which contains information about servers and their server components. To display the whole state, use ToString() function on the DomainState type object or invoke the Get-CEServerStates cmdlet with -InformationAction Continue parameter.

Stop server components

Note

Opened Management Service connection is required to use this cmdlet!

You can stop all server components on a server in a Contact Expert domain with the Stop-CEServers cmdlet. You need to specify DomainId parameter to define which domain's server you want to stop the server components on. You also need to define the ManageDomainServer parameter, which describes what servers you want to manage in the given domain. In a High Availability Contact Expert environment, you are going to see two servers in a domain: a primary and a secondary server. In a single server Contact Expert environment, you are going to have only a primary server in a domain. When checking the status of server components in a domain with the Get-CEServerStates cmdlet, you can see if there is a secondary server in the domain or not.

After you started the stopping process, you can check the status of the process with the Get-CEServerStates command.

Start server components

Note

Opened Management Service connection is required to use this cmdlet!

You can invoke start all server components only when all components are stopped!

You can start all server component on a server in a Contact Expert domain with the Start-CEServers cmdlet. This cmdlet can be used similar like the Stop-CEServers cmdlet.