Hints and Tips for using IBM’s Alert Notification

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Overview

 

IBM's Alert Notification Service is a hybrid cloud based solution that allows you to centralize and simplify your notification strategy. It works seamlessly with other cloud based and on premise applications. Alerts are forwarded to Alert Notification using a secure Restful API.

 

Capabilities

• Notify your operations teams by email, voice, SMS and Slack.

• Notify your operations teams based on on-call and on-duty schedules. Create your own schedules or select from a list of out of the box schedule templates.

• Specify exact notification methods to use for on-duty, on-call and not working users.

• Ability to override normal notification methods, for extreme or critical issues.

• Manage schedules and address allocation and resource changes using Who is working now.

• Create simple policies to identify specific alerts or groups of similar alerts. Then specify exactly who should be notified.

• When notifications are not acknowledged, specify a chain of escalations to ensure the right stakeholders are aware of unresolved or unaddressed issues.

• Using API's you can manage or create users, groups and policies. Alerts can be sent to Alert Notification from many cloud, on premise sources and from New Relic. Using simple scripting and Curl.

• Use the Alert Notification Mobile Application to receive and manage your alerts on your mobile devices. The mobile application is available from Apple App Store and Google Play.

• Use the Alert Notification Slack Application. The Slack application allows you to quickly connect to all your Slack team domains, and then select the channels to notify. Eliminating the need to manually create or import web hook URL's. The application also provides two-way communications with links and an acknowledge button contained in the Slack message.
   

Hints and tips for using IBM Alert Notification

 

After obtaining a Bluemix or Marketplace Alert Notification subscription follow these steps:

1. In Bluemix, make a note of your service credentials including both your API keys and the URLs provided.

2. In Marketplace, log into your subscription -> Navigate to Manage API Keys menu item -> create and make a copy of the keys for later use. The URLs needed to send alerts are visible on this page.

3. Configure your event sources to forward only those alerts, for which you want notifications sent. The Integration section below contains more details for this step.

4. In the event payload (use the swagger URL to see the payload options) fill in the "Application or Service Name" with a meaningful value to make policy identification easier.

5. Create the initial set of users that you would like to receive notifications. Be sure to select "Send welcome email" if they will need to access the Alert Notification user interface. The welcome email will contain the URL to the subscription. These users must have a valid IBM ID specified to access the subscription. The email address field will be used as the destination for email notifications and reminders.

6. Once the users have been created, you can also create groups or collections of those users for ease of notification. 

7. Examine the list of alerts received by using the Alert Viewer. Using What, Where (domains and/or host names) and the Application or Service setting visible by clicking here: This icon is adjacent to each alert in the Alert Viewer table. Using these observations create Notification Policies for each logical grouping by adding rules that uniquely identity an alert or groups of alerts. Then assign users or groups as notification recipients or escalation recipients. Once the policies are saved, enable the policies and when alerts arrive in the future, notifications will be sent. If a notification is not acknowledged in the time prescribed in the escalation, escalation notifications are sent. 
8. Each user can configure their notification preferences, the options include email, SMS and voice.
9. When basic user and group notifications are in place, group schedules can be created so on duty and on call notifications can be sent based on time zones, using a follow the sun and other scheduling strategies
10. You can maintain and manage schedule changes using the "Who is working now" menu item.

This list of hints and tips will get you started using Alert Notification, see the following topics for more capabilities and additional information.

 

Online Videos:

Each of the following videos provides additional guidance and information on the usage of Alert Notification.

 

Scheduling introduction, working hours and notification preferences:

http://ibm.biz/Bdr3HA

 

Building a schedule, static patterns, saving static patterns:

http://ibm.biz/Bdr3Hu

 

Assigning users, auto assignments of users to shifts:

http://ibm.biz/Bdr3HQ

 

Working with a shift series:

http://ibm.biz/Bdr3HT

 

Who is working Now (used to alter, remediate and maintain shifts):

http://ibm.biz/Bdr3Hk

 

Slack Integration:

http://ibm.biz/Bdr3Ht

 

Runbook Automation and New Relic Integration:

http://ibm.biz/Bdr3H6

 

Learn more:

IBM Knowledge Center: 

http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSY487/com.ibm.netcool_OMNIbusaas.doc_1.2.0/landingpage/product_welcome_alertnotification.html

 

IBM Marketplace: 

https://www.ibm.com/marketplace/cloud/alert-notification/us/en-us

 

IBM Bluemix:

https://console.ng.bluemix.net/docs/services/AlertNotification/index.html

 

IBM developerWorks wiki:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/W9bdf99ba8490_464b_a615_a4ad0b65fc09