Universal Transaction Gateway Stand Alone Guide (v2)

Description: Review the below information available in the Universal Transaction Gateway Stand Alone application. 

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• At-a-Glance
• Header 
• Devices
• Express Manager
• Global Status
• Interface Thread(s)
• Requests
• Routes
• Summary and History
• Offline Manager

For more information, access the Start or Stop Stand-Alone Mode on the UTG article. 

At-a-Glance

This section guides you on how to enable and disable sections to be viewed by the At-a-Glance screen. By default, this screen displayed all the enabled reporting options with checkmarks and displayed the default view when started up.

If you would like to customize this view, clear the desired options and then click At-a-Glance in the list to view the edited list. Should you need to restore default view settings, select refresh at the top of this list to bring back the default values.

Clicking on a single option will narrow down the view to that section specifically.

Header 

• The first line displays the current time, day, and date.
• The second line displays the following from left to right:
  • How long the UTG has been running in the dd:hh:mm:ss format.
  • The build number. In this example, the build is 3112.
    • An "f" after the build number indicates the UTG is running in Stand Alone, and other indicators will appear in trace.
  • The number of UTG threads created out of 90, or the maximum configured for the UTG. In this example, the number of threads created is 16 out of 90.
  • The approximate amount of RAM allocated to the UTG.
  • The countdown, in seconds, until the UTG refreshes its internal thread identifier list.
  • The time the UTG started in the hh:mm:ss format.
  • The day the UTG started.
  • The date the UTG started in the mm/dd format.
• The third line displays the current UTG status, and any of the following may appear:
  • Running – the normal status when the UTG is operating.
  • !UNMANAGED! - The UTG is not registered\connected with the Shift4 Datacenter. In support, you will almost exclusively only see this if the UTG was forcibly shut down the previous time it was running. It should not affect processing.
  • Pre-Shutdown, Shutdown Pending, Shutdown Start (countdown), Shutdown, and Shutdown Now – A series of statuses as the UTG is being stopped.
  • Prepare Update, Pending Update, Update Start (countdown), Update Now, and Update Launched: A series of statuses as the UTG automatically updates.

Devices

The Devices section in the UTG Stand Alone shows all configured devices and their current operating state. This option is enabled by default and displays at the very top of the UTG SA on the right of the At-a-Glance section. If no devices are configured in the TuneUp, this field will state “Devices” and be blank. This field should be referenced when a device is displaying strange or unusual behavior.

The device thread example above will break down by color what information is shown and what order it will appear. This will be the same for all devices configured in the UTG.

• [Thread Assignment] (Green) This section will increment each time a new thread is added to the UTG; this is to a max of 300 threads. This limit includes Interface Threads and Devices. 
• [API TID] (Purple) This section shows the API TID we have configured in the UTG TuneUp. This Section can contain Alpha and Numeric Characters.
• [Device Name] (Pink) This section shows the device thread name in the UTG TuneUp. This Section can contain Alpha, Numeric, and Special Characters.
• [Device Status] (Blue) section shows what communication is occurring with the device. This should change whenever an action is performed, and it should display the current action; or when not in use, it should scroll between Idle, listening, looking for other work, or waiting. If you see the status gets stuck on Start-Up, Abort Failure, or Pause, this means the device is unable to communicate or is misconfigured and should be reviewed.

Express Manager

The Express Manager is enabled by default and is located directly under the devices section in the UTG SA. This displays the status of requests sent and received between the UTG and Shift4 data centers in the TCP Client, Routes, and Updates rows.

• The TcpClient (highlighted orange) row shows that this UTG is registered as a trusted entity with Shift4’s data center and that it has obtained a list of encryption keys from Shift4. “Key Page Success” will be displayed if the UTG has successfully connected to the data center and obtained an encryption key list. Any other message here means that the data center cannot validate this UTG client as trusted or the UTG was unable to connect to the data center.
  

  Errors that occur while connecting will be displayed in plain text on the TcpClient row.
  
  The “next key page” denotes when the UTG automatically obtains a new set of encryption keys from the Shift4 data center. This also occurs every time the UTG makes a new connection to the data center.
  

• The Routes (highlighted blue) row shows how long the UTG has been in its current state and the number of requests and responses that have been made/received from the POS to the data center in total since its last connection. It also displays when it has successfully downloaded a new list of Active Routes (IPs) to our data center.
• The Updates (highlighted green) row displays when the next scheduled check for updates will occur for the UTG if an auto-update is requested.

Alerts Section

Some errors are also visible in the Alerts section at the top of the Stand Alone, highlighted in red. (Example of Alert below.)

Note: The Alerts section will only show if the UTG is experiencing an issue requiring correction on the PC or Shift4 configuration.

Global Status

The Global Status section gives you more detailed information regarding the UTG’s communication status with the Shift4 data center and the UTG’s offline procedures. This section is enabled by default and is highlighted green on the UTG Stand Alone.

When starting the UTG Stand Alone, a message of "WaitKeyPage", "Connection Needed no connection", "KeyPage Required KeyPage not available", "Offline Key Okay", "KeyPage not available", or "No Failures" will display in this section.

Once the UTG can establish a connection to the data center, the message will change to “Ready No Failures” if no errors are encountered.

Internal:
A connection will show in Citadel logs.

If an error occurred during connection, the UTG would remain in an offline state. On the far right side of the Global Status section, you can find out if this UTG has the UTG Secure Offline Stand-In enabled and what parameters are configured for this. When disabled, you will see the message of “Never.” When configured, this section displays Custom, Low, Medium, or High. Followed by the number of failed transactions needed and the time span in seconds in which that number of failures must occur to place the UTG in offline mode. In the example, the UTG is configured for a Custom offline level of 2 failures within 240 seconds.

Interface Thread(s)

The Interface thread(s) displays the name and status of the configured interface threads in the UTG TuneUp. If an error is encountered with binding to the IP or TCP Port, this section will turn red, indicating it has failed in binding.

All interface types will have a standard set of fields that need to be populated, and some will have specialized fields unique to that connection type. See the color-coded TCP/SSL thread below for more information.

All information on this line will be visible on the UTG configuration page once the UTG has connected to the data center and uploaded the configuration.

• [Thread Name] (RED) The Task Description from the UTG API Interface Tab. Essentially the name of the thread.
• [Status] (ORANGE) State of communication with the Configured Interface. Waiting indicates that the thread is idle and listening for transactions.
• [Host IP] (YELLOW) The Configured Host Address for this Interface. The IP interface on which the UTG is listening for transactions.
• [Port] (GREEN) The Configured Listen Port (TCP Port) for this Interface is displayed in hex (decimal displays in parenthesis).
• [Masking] (BLUE) States whether card information is sent unmasked or masked. This should always be masked.
• [Offline Stand-in Threshold] (PURPLE) This field shows what dollar amount the offline threshold is set to. See the UTG Quick Installation Guide>Configuring interfaces for more information.
• [Encryption Threshold] (BLACK) The Encryption Threshold field will only be present on connections that utilize SSL/TLS to communicate. Examples would be TcpSslAPI, HttpSslAPI, or CloudSslAPI.

In addition, if you are working with an Oracle Interface using the OPI Driver, additional fields for transaction tracking will show below the interface line and above the request section. These are Oracle Dispatcher and Oracle History, and they work similarly to the Requests and History Sections of the UTG Stand Alone. Still, they only focus on OPI communications for the configured thread.

Requests 

The request section highlighted in yellow shows and displays active "tasks" being handled by the UTG. Typically, tasks are completed very quickly and may appear for only a moment.

When active, a message of "x" Wait will be displayed. The x represents the number of tasks waiting to be completed by the UTG. Tasks, in this sense, don't just mean transactions; this is all active communication between the UTG and its connected sources. (If you are trying to track processing requests, see the Summary and History Sections of the Stand Alone)

Routes

Routes are connections to Shift4's data centers. The route score displayed in the UTG Stand Alone will be based on the "Max Score" setting inside the UTG TuneUp under the tab "Express." The default is "10". This follows the same logic employed by the Shift4 Probe utility, where a higher score indicates higher latency in the connection. A Perfect connection is "0." 

Summary and History

Summary: This section displays the Fastest Transaction, Slowest Transaction, and Most Recent Transaction. You can use this information to gauge response times when troubleshooting issues with slow response times.

History: This section will show the last ten transactions processed through the UTG. It will identify information such as Date, Time, API Function, S4 Merchant, Invoice, and Amount to help identify transactions for troubleshooting communication issues.

Offline Manager

The Offline Manager section provides information on transactions processed while the UTG is in an Offline state.

The Blue highlighted section depicts how many requests have been placed into pending completion awaiting the restoration of the UTG computer's Internet Connection.

The Green highlighted section shows the total number of requests and transmits sent to and from the UTG since it entered an offline state.

• Rx = Request to UTG
• Tx = Transmit from UTG

The Purple highlighted section would show the last few requests that the system processed and the UTG's response to this request while the UTG was in the Offline state.