Manage Alerts

Introduction

The Manage Alerts dashboard provides users with a simple way of viewing, creating, editing and deleting alerts. This dashboard is designed to allow users to manage alerts for a selected environment, while admin users will be able to manage the alerts of all environment members.

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Account Owners and Admins

All references to admins also apply to account owners.

Accessing the Manage Alerts Dashboard

Access the Manage Alerts dashboard in the following ways:

  1. Through the Settings dashboard:
    1.1. Click Settings in the top navigation bar.
    1.2. Click the Manage Environments button to display the Environments window, and then click the Alerts button:
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Environments Window

  1. Through the Account icon - click your account name to display a dropdown menu and then selecting Manage Alerts:
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My Alerts

Default Alert Settings

Alert settings are managed by admins through the Settings console. The selections made here will then apply to the way that other users set alerts. To learn more, see Setting Alert Defaults.

Viewing Alerts

In the Environments window, click the Alerts button. This opens the Manage Alerts dashboard. The dashboard displays all the existing alerts, divided according to their type (Tiers, Applications, and Custom alerts).

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Manage Alerts Dashboard

Accessing and Editing Alerts for Any View via Direct URL

You can also access and edit alerts for any view using a direct URL. When opening the URL of a view that has alerts, the page behaves in the same way as when you click Edit from the Manage Alerts dashboard.

Adding Alerts

  1. Click the Add Alert button.
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This opens the New Alert Settings window. Because you haven't selected any options, most of the fields in the screen are grayed-out.

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New Alert Settings window

  1. From the Type dropdown list, select the type of alert - Application, Tier or Custom - for which you're adding an alert. Custom alerts allow you to create an alert based on the views you created.
  2. Select the name of the alert.
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New Alert select view

  1. Specify whether to alert on new events only.
  2. Next, specify whether the alert should be for an anomaly.
    5.1 If you select anomaly, click 'Select function".
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Select function

This opens the Select Function dialog.

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Select Function Dialog Box

5.2 Select the function on which to perform an anomaly detection, for example, Severity. The description of the function will be updated automatically to describe the selected function and the Parameters field will also be filled with the function parameters. You can see the code for the function by clicking the See code link to open a GitHub page (not shown).

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Dialog with Selected Function

5.3 Click Test to verify the function parameters.
5.4 Next, click Apply to save the function and close this dialog.
The New Alert window appears with the updated information.

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New Alert Settings with updated information

  1. Now specify the frequency of the anomaly in minutes (the default is 60 minutes).

Setting Alert Channels

OverOps supports a number of different channels that you can use to receive/set alerts, including email, Slack, PagerDuty, and more. You'll need to specify via which channels to send the alert. Note that you can create a new alert without channels, however, no alert will be sent. The available channels include:

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New Alert

The Alerts dashboard also validates the information you enter for each alert. See Validating Alerts below for details.

  1. When adding a channel that's not email, remember to click the Test button to verify the channel connection.
  2. When done, click Apply.

Channel Options

While email can be configured per user, the default Slack and PagerDuty integrations can only be set up by an admin because they are shared by all users who are accessing the installation.

Email Channel

When setting up email as your alert channel, you'll need to specify the email alert recipients. You'll see the number of selected email alert recipients in the screen, and if no recipients were selected the message will show 0 recipients.

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Email Recipients

The number displayed in the message will be a summary of the options 'Email me' and 'Email all team members' above it. However, any additional recipients entered in the Email the following additional people field (when the check-box is selected) will not be included in this calculation.

Custom

The Custom feature enables routing and other actions, such as alerting for new events and fluctuations in event volume, within environments by periodically activating user defined custom functions that analyze the OverOps event data via APIs to determine if and what action should be taken. The Anomaly Function and the new Action Channel work together: The Anomaly function detects the anomaly and the Action channel acts on it.

  1. To display the information on the selected anomaly for which you're setting the channel, select the Custom checkbox.
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Custom Channel

  1. From the Function dropdown list, select the function to activate when an alert is triggered.
    The information on the selected function will be displayed in the Description field.
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Custom Channel Function

  1. Click the Test button to verify the channel connection.
  2. When done, click Apply.

Global Alerts

Global alerts are set (and edited) by administrators and are then displayed to all environment users. Global alerts are set through the OverOps API.

Setting View Alerts as ‘Global’

To set an alert as 'Global' call the Edit Alert settings of a View API and set the 'global' attribute to true (note that only administrators can set this attribute to true).

When this attribute is set to true:

  • Administrators can edit alert settings in the UI
  • Alert setting will apply to all the users across the environment
  • Members can view the alerts for this view but can not edit them

Editing Global Alerts

If you're an admin, you can also edit alerts using the Alerts dashboard. Note that any change you make to a global alert will then apply to all environment users.

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Editing a Global Alert

Viewing Global Alert Settings

Any team member can view a global alert's settings through the Manage Alerts screen. Stand next to the view button (eye) when hovering over a global alert row (admins will see an edit pencil/trash icon rather than the view option).

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Viewing Global Alert Settings

Validating Alerts

To be able to see which channels have validation issues so that you can easily fix them, the Alerts dashboard displays validation indicators and error texts.

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Alert Validation Errors

Editing Existing Alerts

  1. To edit an alert, open the Manage Alerts window by selecting Settings >Alerts.
  2. In the Manage Alerts window, select the alert you wish to edit (standing on an alert displays the Edit and Delete options). You can also simply click the alert line itself to open the Edit window.
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Edit and Delete Options

  1. If you delete an alert you created, you'll be asked to confirm the deletion. You will not be able to delete an alert created by someone else.
  2. If you choose to edit an alert, remember that you'll only be able to edit an alert you created.
    Selecting edit opens the Alert Settings for the selected alert.
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Alert Settings

  1. Update the alert settings and then click Apply to save and to return to the Manage Alerts dashboard.

Viewing As...

Admins can also act on behalf of other users, to view and edit their alerts.

To switch to another user:
In the View as field, select the user who alerts you wish to view.

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View As window

Receiving Alerts

New error alerts are sent when an error matches the View for which it was is defined. The alert includes the installation, application and server in which the error was detected. It also includes the error location, and the full stack trace. Click View Event to open its Automated Root Cause page and explore further.

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New Error Alert in Slack

Threshold alerts are triggered when the number of occurrences in the View for which the alert was defined exceeds the threshold in a rolling hour window. The alert includes the View for which it was defined (e.g. "Log errors in App1"), the time window and number of occurrences. It also includes the last five events leading to the alert. Click View Errors to open the View in the Dashboard in the exact timeframe in which the threshold was exceeded.

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Threshold Alert in Slack

Email digests are sent aggregating new error alerts into an email when the number of alerts exceeds the target window frame.

Related Documents

Functions Management
Adding Alerts through the Views Dashboard