Alert Configuration

| Alert Configuration Tool

The alert configuration tool allows you, as the installer, to have more control over what alerts are generated within the system. Whether it's some of our predefined alerts you find to be irrelevant or creating new alerts (with limited operators) we don't have yet, Alerts configuration. 

Enabling/ Disabling Alerts

What does it mean to enable or disable alerts? In the 75F system, we have two terms that often get confused:

Alert - A set condition has become true, and an alert condition is met. The CCU makes a log of this event. 

Notification - A message that is sent to a user when an alert condition has been triggered. 

So when you enable or disable an Alert, it means you are actually keeping an alert from being triggered and logged by the CCU. Whereas when you disable a notification, all you are doing is removing yourself from the list who are informed of an alert condition. 

The benefits of enabling and disabling alerts are that you reduce the amount of noise in the alert log and only see relevant alerts if you look at the alert history. 

To enable or disable an alert, simply check the box in the Enable Alert column. 

When you disable an alert, it is no longer visible in Notification Management for any user of that site. 

You can also mute alerts for specific equipment. This is what we call deep muting and actually keeps the alert condition from running on specific equipment. Again, this is different than muting the notification like you may have done before. So if you are performing service on a floor or specific piece of equipment, mute the alert at its source for a period of time! 

Creating Custom Alerts

You are also able to create custom alerts now. Our alert framework uses .json format and can be tricky to learn. We are also currently limited by the number of operators we can use. So in this article, I do not cover the complete capabilities of custom alerts, but will show you the basics so you can try it yourself. 

I recommend always starting with one of our current alerts as the basis for a new alert you wish to create. This can work well if you think our alert triggers too quickly or not quickly enough, or if the conditions are the same but you want an alert for a different sensor. 

To use an existing alert as a template. Just hover over one of the alerts and click 'Use as Basis for Custom Alert'

That will open up the .json alert editor. Here, you see what looks like a lot of gibberish if you aren't a programmer. But let me define some of the key terminology to simplify this for you. 

"key" - This is the haystack query to find the point. This query needs to be specific to a single point that is common across the equipment you are looking to create an alert for. 

"value" - This is the value you wish to compare against, or your threshold, in other words. 

"grpOperation" - When you are running the query, the group operation is the level hierarchy you want your query to run. You will nearly always use equip here. 

"condition" - How am I comparing key and value? In the example above, I am saying if key > value, then the condition is true. 

"offset" - This is the duration the condition must be true before raising the alert. 

"mTitle" - Subject of the alert message

"mMessage" - This is the text that will be displayed in the alerts history when this alert is logged

"mNotificationMessage" - This is the message that will be sent in email or text to the users who enrolled in notifications for this alert. 

With that limited understanding of this format, you should be able to work your way into building the custom alerts you require. NOTE: ALWAYS test your custom alerts! 

Don't forget to name your alert in the lower left corner of the editor. Once the custom alert is enabled, it will show up just like any other alert in the Notification Management page to all users to enroll in notifications. 

Adding Outside Emails for Notification

If you have ever wanted to add a non-75F user to receive notifications for something, this is how you can do that. Typically, I would expect this to get used for auto-service ticket creation. 

To add an email to receive notifications of alerts, simply click "Edit Alert Emails", type in the email you want to receive notifications, and add.

Once the email is added, simply enable the appropriate check boxes under that email's column.