Alert Responses Administration

Alert Responses Administration allows the administrator to edit and test alert responses which are built on top of alert response services.

What is an Alert Response Response?

An alert response tells the portal how to communicate alert events to interested recipients. A response might be sending an email or passing alert event details to Slack, JIRA, or any Webhook-enabled service your team uses.

Administrators can create one or more ways for the portal to respond to alerts from a given site, alert type, and applicable resources.

For example, they can create an email (SMTP) response and a Slack response for all page-type alerts coming from any resource of a given site. Slack and email messages will be sent when a page-type alert arrives at the portal. 

This can be filtered to specific resources so you can send alert responses to different recipients based on specific resources, not just the alert type.

Here is the Alert responses admin screen:

And here are the details:

Field	Description
Site	Site name as found in [PROTOPDIR]/etc/custid.cfg
Alert Type	See the table located at the bottom of this page
Resources	Select the resources this alert response applies to
Service	See the service table located at the bottom of this page
Email Recipients	A comma-delimited list of email addresses to receive alert messages.  This can include the mobile-number@carrier.xyz format. Please take a look below for more details.
Enabled	Whether the alert is enabled

 

Create an Alert Response - Add Alert Response Button

A popup window appears when clicked, allowing the user to create an alert response record:

Field	Description
Site	Site name as found in [PROTOPDIR]/etc/custid.cfg
Resources	Select the resources to which this alert response applies.  Leave blank for "all"
Alert Type	See the table located at the bottom of this page
Notification Service	See the service table located at the bottom of this page
Enabled	Whether the alert is enabled

1. Select the Site this alert response is for from the drop-down.
2. Select the Resources to which this alert response applies.  Leave this field blank for "all".
3. Select the Alert Type from the drop-down.
4. Select the Alert Response Service for this Alert Response. 
   If you choose an SMTP-based service, you will be prompted for the (comma-separated) email address(es) to which you want to send the email.  These addresses can include mobile-number@carrier.xyz. Please take a look at the carrier email address formats below.
   
   WARNING: Lately, users of the number@carrier approach have complained of messages being received with delays exceeding an hour. Please ensure that you do not see delays before using this alert response.  
   
   
5. Be sure the Enabled field is checked if you want this Alert Response to be used. Uncheck the box if you wish to temporarily prevent these from going out.
6. Click the Submit button and the new response will appear in the list.

Mobile Number Email Address Format by Carrier - USA

Mobile Number Email Address Format by Carrier - Canada

 

Manage Services Button

Two popup windows appear side-by-side. The left one displays defined Alert Response Services and allows the user to delete them, while the right one allows the user to create or update Alert Response Services.

Left side window:

Field	Description
Type	See table located at the bottom of this page
Site	Site name (from [PROTOPDIR]/etc/custid.cfg)
Name	Alert response service name

Dragging a column header into the space above the column headers will sort alert response records by that column in ascending order.

Right side window - the fields displayed vary depending upon the defined Alert Response Service selected on the left or the type of service selected from the Create Service dropdown:

Service Type Values:

Service Type	Description
Slack	Alerts are sent to the site’s configured Slack channel
Microsoft Teams	Alerts are sent to the configured Teams channel
SMTP	Alerts are sent to the email addresses listed
Webhook	Alerts sent to a web application
JIRA	Alerts sent to a Jira channel

When "Slack" is selected as service type

Field	Description
Site	Site name (from [PROTOPDIR]/etc/custid.cfg)
Name	Alert response service name
URL	Slack Channel URL/key where messages are sent

When "Microsoft Teams" is selected as the service type:

When "SMTP" is selected as service type

Field	Description
Site	Site name (from [PROTOPDIR]/etc/custid.cfg)
Name	Alert response service name
Sender	Email address of the sender
Host	Host identifier for email target
Port	Port listed as the SMTP port on the target host
Username	Username acceptable to the target host
Password	The password associated with the username
SSL	Indicates SSL required / in use
Use as default email service	For automated tasks that do not use an alert response

Note: The username and password above can be used for authentication on SMTP servers that do not require or allow other forms of authentication.

When "Webhook" is selected as the service type:

Field	Description
Site	Site name (from [PROTOPDIR]/etc/custid.cfg)
Name	Alert response service name
URL	URL of the web service configured to receive alerts
HTTP Method	See table at bottom of this page
Query String Template	Defined by the web application receiving the webhook; adds values to the URL to complete the query string for delivery to the web app. (see Template Variables below)
Headers	Define custom HTTP headers here
Payload Template	Defined by the web application receiving the webhook; defines the event and data objects sent to the web app after being populated with alert details (see Template Variables below)

NOTE:  Webhook Template Variables

There are currently two template variables available for you to use in query strings and/or payloads:

• {notificationTitle} which corresponds to the subject line of the notification and
• {notificationText} which represents the notification body (note that this may contain multiple alerts)

When "JIRA" is selected as service type

Field	Description
Site	Site name (from [PROTOPDIR]/etc/custid.cfg)
Name	Alert response service name
URL	The Internet address of the Jira channel is configured to receive alerts
JIRA User Email	The email address of the Jira user monitoring the channel
Access Token	Access token for JIRA user email
JIRA Project Key	Project key for JIRA user email

 

Alert Types

Field	Description
alarm	Appears in orange in the portal
info	Appears in blue
page	Appears in red
warning	Appears in yellow

 

Webhook HTTP Methods

Field	Description
Get	Standard "Get" method
Post	Standard "Post" method
Patch	User-defined method
Delete	User-defined method

 

Service Type values

Field	Description
Slack	Alerts sent to the site’s configured Slack channel
SMTP	Alerts sent to the emails listed when you create an Alert Response
Webhook	Alerts sent to a web application
JIRA	Alerts sent to a Jira channel