Working with alerts

As a dashboard owner, you can configure alerts for Period KPI charts to monitor business performance against defined thresholds. Alerts are triggered during monitoring when the specified conditions are met—for example, when a KPI reaches, exceeds, or falls short of a target value. When a new alert is generated, an alert message can be published to a predefined Kafka topic. This topic can then be consumed by downstream applications or services to process, route, or forward the alert notifications as needed.

Setting up new alerts

About this task

From the Thresholds tab of the period KPI chart, you can set up alerts to get notified when the value of your period KPI reaches, surpasses, or does not reach a specified threshold. When the data of your period KPI triggers an alert, you receive a pop-up notification with a custom message and a priority label. Only the owner of the dashboard receives pop-up notifications and sees the alerts.

Also, if the Kafka alert notifier is enabled, a Kafka event is sent to the Kafka alert topic. See Alerts parameters.

Each dashboard shows the number of alerts that are triggered in the underlying charts and groups them by priority. Click alert icon to open the alerts notifier.

Procedure

From the Thresholds tab, create a threshold for a period KPI chart.
A threshold is necessary because you define alert conditions in relation to threshold values.
Add an alert:
Choose the threshold for the new alert.
Select an alert condition.
You can set an alert to send a notification in one of the following situations:
- The period KPI value is equal to or greater than the threshold value.
- The period KPI value does not reach the threshold value within a specified period (start and end date). If at the end date the KPI value is not equal to or greater than the threshold, you receive an alert.
- The period KPI value drops to the level or below the threshold.
- The period KPI value does not drop to or below the threshold within a specified period (start and end date).
If applicable, specify a period of activity (start and end date) for the alert.
Select a priority label.
The priority label is a visual aid that helps you identify the level of risk that is associated with a situation. Priority can be one of low, medium, or high. Alerts are grouped by priority in the product interface.
Enter an informative message that helps you understand something about the situation that triggers this alert.
Click Done to return to the dashboard, and then click Save.

Results

As a result of setting up an alert, a notification pops up from your browser when your data triggers an alert. Your browser must be open to receive a notification, and you can consult a list of alerts from the dashboard that contains the chart for which alerts were set up.

If the Kafka alert notifier is enabled, a Kafka event is sent to the Kafka alert topic. See Business Performer Center parameters.

Editing alerts and thresholds

When the period KPI chart is in editing mode, from the Thresholds tab, you can view your existing alerts. You can modify the notification message, priority level, and the values and ranges of the associated threshold. You can also delete alerts. If you delete an alert, previously triggered alert notifications remain visible in your dashboard. When you redefine a threshold, the updated settings apply only to future alerts based on new data and do not affect historical data.

Managing alert messages

When alert messages are triggered, they appear while monitoring your business data. To delete them, click the bell icon Bell-shaped button to display the list of alerts to display the list of alert messages and then individually delete them by clicking the bin icon, or use the Clear all button to remove all of them at once.

Reading alerts from a Kafka topic

The alert notifier sends messages to the Kafka alert topic as soon as an alert is detected. You can consume the Kafka alert topic, for example to process or forward these messages.

About this task

Here are the attributes of an alert json message in the Kafka topic:

Table 1. Alert json attributes
Attribute name	Description
dashboardName	The name of the dashboard in which the alert is configured
dashboardOwner	The username of the dashboard owner
dashboardType	The type of the dashboard. Possible values are: EVERYONE for a shared dashboard ONLY_ME for a private dashboard TEMPLATE for user defined dashboard template
chartName	The name of the chart in which the alert is configured
monitoringSource	The monitoring source on which the chart is based
timestamp	Timestamp of the data point that caused the alert to be triggered. In the event of a missed target (MissTargetUp, MissTargetDown) this timestamp corresponds to the first datapoint received after the end of the time window.
value	Value of the data point that caused the alert to be triggered
kind	Type of the alert. Possible values are: HitTargetUp: alert is triggered when the data reaches or exceeds the threshold HitTargetDown: alert is triggered when the data drops to or below the threshold MissTargetUp: alert is triggered when the data does not reach the threshold on time (the time window is defined by startTimeWindow and endTimeWindow) MissTargetDown: alert is triggered when the data does not drop to or below the threshold on time (the time window is defined by startTimeWindow and endTimeWindow)
thresholdName	The name of the threshold
thresholdValue	The value of the threshold
startTimeWindow	Start time of the time window in which the alerts are computed. Only available for alert types “MissTargetUp“ and “MissTargetDown“.
endTimeWindow	End time of the time window in which the alerts are computed. Only available for alert types “MissTargetUp“ and “MissTargetDown“.
priority	The priority of the alert. Possible values are: Low Medium High
message	The message delivered in the alert.

The following are two examples of Kafka alert json messages.

For alerts of type “reaches or exceeds the threshold“ or “drops to or below the threshold“:

{
  "dashboardName": "Dashboard name",
  "dashboardOwner": "Dashboard_owner",
  "dashboardType": "ONLY_ME",
  "chartName": "The chart name",
  "monitoringSource": "Name of the monitoring source",
  "timestamp": "2020-09-21T00:00:00Z",
  "value": 12,
  "kind": "HitTargetUp",
  "thresholdName": "Threshold name",
  "thresholdValue": 11,
  "priority": "High",
  "message": "The alert message"
}

For alerts of type “does not reach the threshold on time“ or “does not drop to or below the threshold on time“, the format is the same but the alert time window is specified:

{
  "dashboardName": "Dashboard name",
  "dashboardOwner": "Dashboard_owner",
  "dashboardType": "EVERYONE",
  "chartName": "Chart name",
  "monitoringSource": "Monitoring source",
  "timestamp": "2020-09-18T00:00:00Z",
  "value": 4,
  "kind": "MissTargetUp",
  "thresholdName": "Threshold name",
  "thresholdValue": 14,
  "startTimeWindow": "2020-09-06T22:00:00Z",
  "endTimeWindow": "2020-09-17T21:59:59.999Z",
  "priority": "High",
  "message": "The alert Message"
}

For more information about samples showing how to consume Kafka topics for alert notifications, see Samples External link opens a new window or tab .