Set Up Notifications for Multiple Shifts

Providing managed services is a 24-hour, 7 days a week, 365 days a year proposition. Your customers depend upon your availability and responsiveness at all times. As you grow your business the need for "always-on" coverage intensifies.

But how then do you ensure that first shift NOC employees only receive notifications that occur during their shift, and not those that second or third shift employees should receive, and vice-versa? SilverBack Notification Rules enable you to segregate your shift-based alerts with ease.

Notification Rules define how users are notified, via pager or email, in the event of a fault.

This topic takes you through the following processes:

Let's use a simple scenario: three Notification Rules, identical in every way except for the targeted users and their schedules. This ensures seamless notification of the same alert types to the proper shift workers. For the purposes of this use case example we will use Collection Fault Monitors as the notifications source, target All devices and notify only for Critical and Major alerts.

The steps must be completed in the order they are presented. Otherwise you may experience unexpected results.

 

Creating a Notification Rule

  1. From the Monitoring category page click on the Add Notification Rule link to display the Add Notification Rule form.

You will use the following tabs in the Add Notification Rule form:

Attributes

  1. Select your own domain as the parent Management Domain from the drop-down.

  2. Enter a Name for the Notification Rule. The Description is optional.

    You can enter a description of the Notification Rule, up to a maximum of 1024 characters. You can also enter HTML links here in the format "http://<target>”, “https://<target>" or "mailto:<email_address>". The quotation marks are mandatory for HTML links.

    Each object in the SilverBack managed services platform requires a unique name that is as descriptive as possible.

    The maximum length of this field is 64 characters.

    If you leave the Name field blank, you will be prompted to enter it before you can save.

  3. Un-check the Enable checkbox to prevent notifications from being sent until you are finished editing the rules.

 

Fault Sources

  1. Click on the Fault Sources tab. For this use case example we will ignore Traps, Patch Deployment Failures, System Failures, and Notify On Resolution.

  2. Select All Collection Fault Monitors from the Selected Policies options.

 

Assets

  1. Click on the Assets tab.

  2. Select all target devices by leaving the Select All radio button checked.

 

Severities

  1. Click on the Severities tab.

  2. Select Critical and Major from the alert severity level options:

 

Schedules

  1. Click on the Schedules tab, then click on the Customize radio button to activate the schedule widget.

  2. Click on an existing table row to highlight it, then click on the Delete Schedule button.

  3. Repeat Step 12 for each existing table row.

  4. Using the From and To drop-downs, select the start day and time, then the end day and time, that you want the Notification Rule to be in effect. For this FAQ we will specify:

  1. Click on the Save button.

This Notification Rule will thus be in effect from Monday through Friday, only between the hours of 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

 

For more information about any field or option in the Add Notification Rule form, click on the Help button in the form's upper right-hand corner.

 

Copying Notification Rules

  1. From the Monitoring category page click on the Browse Notification Rules link to display the Notification Rules report.

  2. From the Notification Rules report, click on the rule just created above, then select the Copy To option.

 

  1. In the Copy dialog window, select the same Management Domain in which the original exists. Remember, we are making a copy.

  2. Click on the OK button.

 

The display refreshes to the Notification Rules report.

Notice that the copy's name is prepended with "Copy of ..."

 

  1. Repeat the copy operation one more time.

Notice that the copy's name is prepended with "Copy of Copy of ..."

 

Editing Notification Rules

  1. From the Notification Rules report, click on one the original Notification Rule we created (not one of the copies), then select the Edit option.

 

  1. In the Attributes tab, click on the Enabled checkbox.

 

  1. Click on the Users tab, then click on the Select Targets radio button to expand the list.

  2. Select the users you want to receive first shift notifications by selecting their corresponding checkboxes.

  3. Click on the Save button.

 

  1. In the Notification Rules report, click on one of the Notification Rule copies, then select the Edit option.

  2. In the Attributes tab, highlight the Notification Rule's Name, then enter the new name.

  3. Click on the Enabled checkbox.

 

  1. Click on the Users tab, then click on the Select Targets radio button to expand the list.

  2. Select the users you want to receive first shift notifications by selecting their corresponding checkboxes.

 

  1. Click on the Schedule tab.

  2. Click on the existing table row to highlight it, then click on the Delete Schedule button.

  3. Using the From and To drop-downs, select the start day and time, then the end day and time, that you want the Notification Rule to be in effect. For this FAQ we will specify:

  1. Click on the Add button, then click on the Save button.

This Notification Rule will thus be in effect from Monday through Friday, only between the hours of 5:00 PM to 12:00 AM.

 

For more information about any field or option in the Edit Notification Rule form, click on the Help button in the form's upper right-hand corner.

The Notification Rules report displays the new name for this Notification Rule.

 

  1. Repeat steps 6 through 14 for the last Notification Rule copy, substituting the appropriate name, users and schedule.

Shift-based Collection Fault Monitors alert notifications are now enabled throughout the work week.

 

 

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