How to Configure Web Services

Configure the web services integration by editing the <epicRestWebService> section of the pluginproperties.xml file, a structured XML document.

You must specify a value for <baseURL> in the web services configuration parameters. In all other cases, the default values provided for the parameters in pluginproperties.xml are sufficient unless you want to customize the web services integration.

To configure the web services integration:

  1. On the Vocera Environmental Services Integration server, open the \vocera\evs\resources\plugin\epic\pluginproperties.xml file in a text editor, if it is not already open.
  2. Specify the URL of the Epic system's web services end point as follows.
    Tag Value
    <epicRestWebService>
       <baseUrl/>

    Specify the URL of the Epic system's web services end point between the <baseUrl> and </baseUrl> tags to configure the integration.

    For example, the entry for an Open Epic staging system may look like <baseUrl>https://open-ic.epic.com/Interconnect-FHIR/wcf/Epic.Access.GeneratedServices/EVS.svc/rest/</baseUrl>.

  3. Specify the credentials the web service uses to log into the Epic system as follows.
    Tag Value
    <epicRestWebService>
       <username/>

    Enter the type of authentication and the user name that the web service uses to log in to the Epic system.

    EVS supports the following types of authentication for Epic:

    • windows$
    • local$
    • EMP$

    For example, if the Epic system uses windows$ authentication and the user name is jblair, enter windows$jblair in the username field.

    <epicRestWebService>
       <password/>

    Enter the obfuscated password the EVS web service uses to log in to the Epic server. This password must be obfuscated manually by Vocera and supplied to you. The password Vocera provides begins with "OBF:" to indicate that it is obfuscated; the "OBF:" value is a literal part of the password you must enter.

    Note: When providing the password, make sure that any special characters are encoded using the proper escape sequences. See Appendix: Special Characters in XML for more details.

    If your Epic system does not require any authentication, leave these fields blank.

    Note: If you have upgraded from a version of EVS earlier than 1.1.1, the <username/> and <password/> fields will not exist in the pluginproperties.xml file. Add these fields manually after the <baseUrl/> section, so the pluginproperties.xml file appears similar to the example at the end of this section.
  4. Specify how often Vocera retries updating the Epic cleaning request status to "Complete" (if the first attempt fails) by setting values for the tags in the <epicRestWebService><complete><retry> section of the pluginproperties.xml file.

    Specify a value within each pair of begin and end tags as follows:

    Tag Value
    <epicRestWebService>
       <complete>
          <retry>
             <timeout/>

    Use the <timeout/> tag to specify the total duration of time (in seconds) that may elapse during web service retries when Vocera EVS attempts to update the Epic cleaning request to "Complete". When this time is exceeded, a timeout occurs. By default, the value is 60 seconds.

    If a timeout occurs, Vocera EVS sends an escalation message as specified in the <voice><escalation><message> routine.

    <epicRestWebService>
       <complete>
          <retry>
             <interval/>
    Use the <interval/> tag to specify the amount of time (in seconds) that Vocera will wait before attempting to retry updating the Epic cleaning request status to "Complete", if the previous request failed. By default, the value is 5 seconds.
  5. Specify how often Vocera retries updating the Epic cleaning request status to "In progress" (if the first attempt fails) by setting values for the tags in the <epicRestWebService><inprogress><retry> section of the pluginproperties.xml file.

    Specify a value within each pair of begin and end tags as follows:

    Tag Value
    <epicRestWebService>
       <inprogress>
          <retry>
             <timeout/>

    Use the <timeout/> tag to specify the total duration of time (in seconds) that may elapse during web service retries when Vocera EVS attempts to update the Epic cleaning request to "In progress". When this time is exceeded, a timeout occurs. By default, the value is 60 seconds.

    If a timeout occurs, Vocera EVS sends an escalation message as specified in the <voice><escalation><message> routine.

    <epicRestWebService>
       <inprogress>
          <retry>
             <interval/>
    Use the <interval/> tag to specify the amount of time (in seconds) that Vocera will wait before attempting to retry updating the Epic cleaning request status to "In progress", if the previous request failed. By default, the value is 5 seconds.
  6. Save and close the pluginproperties.xml file.

The web services configuration is now complete. Following is an example of a typical web services configuration.

<epicRestWebService>
  <baseUrl>https://open-ic.epic.com/Interconnect-FHIR/wcf/Epic.Access.GeneratedServices/EVS.svc/rest/</baseUrl>
  <username>windows$jblair</username>
  <password>OBF:1ytm1nqg1f1c1miu1mm01f321nrq1yt0</password>
  <complete>
      <retry>
          <timeout>60</timeout>
          <interval>5</interval>
      </retry>
  </complete>
  <inprogress>
      <retry>
          <timeout>60</timeout>
          <interval>5</interval>
      </retry>
  </inprogress>
</epicRestWebService>