This is by far the quickest and easyist way to receive alerts. Some contacts like those setup for a help desk may require all alerts to be sent. At the top of a Contact's setting screen you have the option to receive all Warning & Critical or Critical only plus the option to track views or events. You will receive all alerts from any nodes that are in your selected views. This can be refined further by selecting [Track Events] This method is a great way to make sure you don't miss alerts from devices recently added to your Mutiny system.
9.2 Contact Template method
This is the most configurable way to deploy your alert settings. The Contact sets-up a template for alerts then copies that template to the nodes/Views.
Navigate to the event alert settings panel at the bottom of your Contact page;
Select (Event Alert Settings) to open the panel. Here you will see all the available alerts; these are a collection of alert settings for all the property groups.
Selecting any (OK), (Warning) or (Critical) button will open the detail settings panel for that alert property.
The alert can be enabled and disabled using the on/off selection at the top. The three shift options allow the control of the raising of alerts (enabling the shift on the contact page controls the receiving of the alerts) the left hand side shift tick boxes control the sending of email alert and the right hand shift tick boxes control the sending of SMS alerts. Each type has a "Delay" field that can be used to extend the time before your alert is raised, if a property returns to okay during your delay period the alert will be cancelled. The Repeat selection on the SMS type allows for the repeating of SMS alerts whilst that alert condition exists.
Use the Apply tick boxes to add your contact to the specific propery alert, ticking remove will remove the contact from the propery if the contact already exists.
Once you are happy with your template, you can copy it to any combination of Nodes and/or Views using the selection panels at the bottom of the panel.
Use a combination of nodes and views followed by the [Apply] button to add the alerts to the Nodes.
9.3 Copy to Nodes method
This method allows you to copy the alert settings from one node to one or more nodes or views. Copy to nodes is only available in the Node Manager view.
First select a node that already has your desired alert template or manually set each alert setting (8.9.3), then either on the sample node to bring up the context menu {right-Click} that has the "Copy to Nodes" option or select the "Copy to nodes" button on the right or the Node Manager View.
This will open the Copy to Nodes panel for the selected node.
Choose the alert items at the top you wish to copy and select the nodes and or views you wish to copy to.
Press [Apply] to make the changes. Please note that this will override any existing Event alert settings on the selected node or any nodes contained in selected views.
9.4 Manual Setting of Alerts
In some cases you may wish to change a single alert property; this may be because a you just want to have a single contact receive the alerts from just one property of one node.
To do this you will need to go directly to the property alert you wish to edit. In this example we will add an existing contact to Disk Critical Alert on a windows server.
Find your Node and double click to open the status panel. Then select Disk Usage then (Critical).
This will open the Disk Usage, Critical Alert panel, for this node and display any existing contacts already configured to receive this alert.
Click the (Add/ Remove Contact) button and select your new contact from the pull-down list and press [Apply].
The new contact will be added to the list and you can edit the shift delay and repeats to suit your requirement.
9.5 Time Based Escalation
In some cases, organisations with a team of support techs operate an escalation process for dealing with reported issues. Mutiny can support this method by use of the delay field in alerts.
The following example assumes 3 levels of escalation at 0, 60 an 90 minute stages. When the node property alert is created, 3 Alerts will be created in the Alert queue, one for each contact, the First Line Contact alert will immediately be processed and sent if they have a valid receiving shift, the other 2 will stay in the queue until their delay time is reached at which time they will then be sent. If the node is "Acknowledged" by an operative then the remaining alerts will stay in the Alert queue until the Acknowledged time is expired. Any queued items will be cancelled if the property returns to OK.
Firstly you will need 3 contacts and we will name the contacts First Line, Second Line etc.
For the First Line contact set the delay to zero (default) for all Event Alert settings
For the Second Line set the delay to 60 for all Event Alert settings
For the Third Line set the delay to 90 for all Event Alert settings
For each contact, copy their alert template to the target nodes as described earlier.
To see how this looks on a node, select an Alert property from one of the target nodes and you should see contacts that look like this;
9.6 Alert Setting Examples
Using a combination or shifts for receiving and shifts for raising alerts you can be creative in you alerting. Here are few examples.
Use the following as a key;
Contact Enabled
Shifts Enabled
Alert Shifts Enabled
Apply selected property
9.6.1 Receive all email alerts.
Contact enabled ---- YES
All shifts enabled ---- YES
All alert shifts enabled for all properties ---- YES
Copied to "All Nodes"
9.6.2 No Alerts whilst on Leave/Vacation
Contact enabled ---- NO
9.6.3 Receive alert during working hours only
Contact enabled ---- YES
All shifts enabled ---- Shift 1 only
9.6.4 send out of hours alert to third party
Contact enabled ---- YES (create a new contact with external email address)
All shifts enabled ---- Shift 1 only
Copied to "Selected Nodes"
9.6.5 Ignore CPU alerts out of business hours
Contact enabled ---- YES
All shifts enabled ---- YES
All alert shifts enabled for all properties ---- CPU Critical, Shift 1 only, remaining alerts as desired
Copied to "Selected Nodes"
9.7 Acknowledging Alerts
Once a contact has received an alert it may be desirable to "Acknowledge" the alert so that other team members are aware that action is being taken.
Once an alert is featured in the event log or visible on the Open Events Wallboard it can be acknowledged in the node status panel.
Select the time period you wish to hold off alerts for and this will prevent any alerts from being sent until the Acknowledge time has expired. If the property returns to okay during this time it will be removed from the alert queue.
