Introduction

To send nominations to the Interconnector you must use ISIS. Since it can only be accessed by a website, and this is quite slow, EuroRunner sends notices to ISIS asynchronously, confirmations are also fetched asynchronously.

Set-Up

When you send a nomination notice to ISIS, the notice status changes from Unsent to Pending, the nominations are then placed on the ISIS website by a EuroRunner server process in the background. When the nominations have been successfully accepted by ISIS the status of the notice will change to Sent. If for any reason the notice send fails, EuroRunner will try a number of times to enter the nominations on ISIS, and if the final attempt fails, then the notice will be marked in as Send Failed. After a successful notice send the confirmation receiver is automatically initiated to retrieve any confirmations.

If required the EuroRunner confirmation receiver can also poll ISIS for confirmations, this occurs every 30 minutes by default, though the interval can be altered by a registry key (see the ISIS section of the Registry documentation for details).

EuroRunner informs users of these status changes using the Outbox traffic lights on the toolbar, and you can identify the status of individual notices by the message icon on the Find Notices screen.

Configuration

This section assumes that you already have the following set-up in EuroRunner:

Item	Type	Name in EuroRunner	Comment
Interconnector	Network	IUK
Transco	Network	NTS
Bacton (IBT)	Point	Bacton	Must be Bacton
Zeebrugge (IZT)	Point	Zeebrugge	Must be Zeebrugge
Bacton (IBT)	Flange	Bacton
Zeebrugge (IZT)	Flange	Zeebrugge
Me Counterparty	Counterparty	GMSL	Your company name

To set-up EuroRunner to allow sending of notices using ISIS; set the following properties for the IUK network using the Notices tab of the network properties screen:

1. This option enables sending of notices.
2. Choose the interface with which EuroRunner will interact: ISIS
3. List of formats in which to send the notice, for ISIS this is always XML
4. Provides an alternative easy to read view of the notice data.

Also set the flange properties for Bacton and Zeebrugge flanges in the IUK network:

1. Checking this allows daily notices to be sent.
2. Select the Default template to send notices with.
3. Provides an alternative easy to read view of the notice data. Should be Interconnector

If you also wish to send weekly notices, you should complete the weekly sections with the same settings.

Also set the flange properties for Bacton in the NTS network using the Secondary Notice tab to allow sending of Bacton Agent notices:

1. This option enables sending of Bacton Agent notices.
2. Select the Bacton Agent counterparty, you may need to create this, if it does not already exist.
3. Choose the interface with which EuroRunner will interact: ISIS
4. List of formats in which to send the notice, for ISIS this is always XML
5. Provides an alternative easy to read view of the notice data.
6. Checking this allows daily notices to be sent.
7. Select the Default template to send notices with.
8. Provides an alternative easy to read view of the notice data. Should be IC (Bacton Agent)

If you also wish to send weekly notices, you should complete the secondary weekly section with the same settings.

You must also add the following System Codes, to convert between EuroRunner codes and ISIS codes:

1. These must be the name of your Me counterparty in EuroRunner.
2. This is the name ISIS knows your counterparty as.
3. This is the name the Bacton Agent knows your counterparty as.

To enable access to ISIS the following details must be set-up for each ISIS shipper on the ISIS tab of the Security screen:

1. The type of connection. Either dedicated line or internet.

Note: A different URL is used for each connection type (See Technical section below).
2. Name of the Me shipper in the network.
3. The ISIS counterparty of the Me shipper.
   Note: This is dependent on the realm and whether Firm or Interruptible.
4. ISIS realm to access, IUK for ISIS and NTS for Bacton Agent
5. Username required to access ISIS
6. Password required to access ISIS for this username
7. You must click Apply to save the changes

These values are stored in the registry, see the ISIS section of the Registry documentation)

To determine the organisation for a particular shipper code, go to the ISIS website, log on and find the link for the organisation within the realm and with the required capacity type.

Note: Do not use the name in the link, but rather the name displayed for p_organisation in the staus bar when you hover the mouse over the link, e.g. https://www.iuk-isis.co.uk/nts/go?p_organisation=GML NI

You can enable and disable polling of ISIS for confirmations using the Services tab of the System Options screen:

Note: This option is available for administrators only.

Technical

The EuroRunnerISISQC COM+ Application, controls outgoing and incoming ISIS notices.

Notices are normally sent asynchronously using the ISISSenderQC component, if the process fails all attempts, then the exception handler is called in the ISISSenderEX component, this retries one final time, and if it fails again an error is logged, and the notice is marked as Send Failed.

ISIS receives confirmations asynchronously using the ISISPollerQC component, if the process fails all attempts, then the exception handler is called in the ISISPollerEX component, this retries one final time, and if it fails again an error is logged.

EuroRunner connects to ISIS using https by automating Internet Explorer to set and get nominations. This is not an ideal method, but unfortunately it is the only current method of automating an ISIS interface.

Configuration

To enable ISIS you inform EuroRunner that you intend to send notices to ISIS during the EuroRunner server installation. If you did not select this option during installation you can still set up sending of notice to ISIS using the user interface (see Set-Up section), but you can only set-up the polling of ISIS for confirmations manually by creating the required registry keys (see the ISIS section of the Registry documentation) and then restarting the GMSL Service.

If you are experiencing problems sending notices, the ISISSenderQC component can be forced to run synchronously by a debug setting (see the ISIS section of the Registry documentation). This setting should be used with care as the EuroRunner client will be locked for some time while waiting for the notice to be sent.

EuroRunner uses the username:password@ format in the URL to connect to ISIS, by default Microsoft disable this feature, so it must be enabled by setting a registry value, see the Internet Explorer section of the Registry documentation for details.

Connection Types

Each of the available connection types uses a different URL for the ISIS website. These are illustrated below:

Connection Type	Realm	URL
Dedicated Line	IUK	https://www.iuk-isis.co.uk/isis
Dedicated Line	NTS	https://www.iuk-isis.co.uk/nts
Internet	IUK	https://www.iuk-isisnet.com/wwwisis
Internet	NTS	https://www.iuk-isisnet.com/wwwnts

Troubleshooting

The most common problem is that EuroRunner cannot connect to ISIS, there may be several different reasons for this, and several different errors reported, though connection errors tend to be reported quickly. If you have any ISIS problem the first thing to check is that the server connectivity is set-up correctly. Connection problems may be caused by your network set-up, firewall rules, IE settings, or user security permissions.

To troubleshoot ISIS connection problems perform these tests in this order to check you can connect OK. You must ensure that these tests are carried out on the EuroRunner server, using the same user that the EuroRunner COM+ applications are running as (this is EuroRunnerUser by default).

• Open Internet Explorer, and ensure it opens directly to a browser window without any popup messages, warnings or errors. If IE has never been started as this user before it may need to be configured.
• Browse to a website outside your network, like http://www.google.co.uk, some windows versions (e.g. Windows 2003 Server) disable browsing using IE by default, this setting may need to be altered.
• Browse to the ISIS website using the relevant URL for your connection type, you will need to enter your IUK username and password to login.
• Browse to the Bacton Agent ISIS website using the relevant URL for your connection type, you will need to enter your NTS username and password to login.
• Browse to the ISIS website, inserting your own username and password in the relevant URL (e.g. https://username:password@www.iuk-isis.co.uk/isis). If this fails you may need to set a registry value to enable this feature, see the Registry Keys section.

Once you are sure that EuroRunner can connect to ISIS OK, you can troubleshoot other problems.

• If outgoing notices are failing you should have an error message reported on the user interface, if you are not getting incoming notices when you expect them, look in the Event Viewers Application log for the error message, EuroRunner errors will be logged under the Source VBRuntime. All failures are logged.
• Once you have the error message you can check against the following problems:

Error	Cause	Solution
Login Failure	Either username or password is incorrect.	Correct using the ISIS tab on the Security screen.
Could not find x	Some set-up data is probably incorrect.	Check that all the set-up data is correct; especially the System Codes and the ISIS settings on the Security screen.
Found more than one x	Some set-up data is probably duplicated.	Check that all the set-up data is correct; especially the System Codes and the ISIS settings on the Security screen. Check that there is only one possible entry for each setting.
The connection to ISIS timed out	EuroRunner has waited for over 100 seconds for an ISIS webpage to open.	Often a retry will solve the problem, but if you get regular timeouts, check your MSMQ and COM+ settings (see the MSMQ section of the Registry documentation) to ensure you don't have multiple concurrent ISIS connections which would slow it down. Otherwise you need to look into the root cause of why your connection to ISIS is so slow.
Unknown realm x	Realm must be IUK or NTS.	Correct using the ISIS tab on the Security screen.
The connection to ISIS was disconnected	Possibly network failure.	Retry sends, ignore for poller as it will automatically try again.
Notice pending timeout expired	Notice send has taken too long, so Notice Sweeper has timed it out.	Often a retry will solve the problem, but if you get regular timeouts, you may want to increase the Notice Sweeper Timeoutsecs setting (see the Notice Sweeper section of the Registry documentation), the default is 600 (10 minutes)

• If the error message does not help, then enable the ISISDebug setting (See the ISIS section of the Registry documentation), this will produce more warning and information entries in the Event Viewer Application log, which should help to identify what is happening.

Another common problem is that you may have left the ISIS service enabled on another server, i.e. a test or disaster recovery server; this will mean that several EuroRunner servers may be polling ISIS concurrently.

• You should always ensure that you only ever enable the ISIS service on your test server when you are actively testing, and when you have completed testing always disable the ISIS service.
• The ISIS service should be disabled on disaster recovery servers until you enter a disaster recovery situation.

Registry Keys

See the ISIS section of the Registry documentation.