Notification Rules and Recipients

Notification rules decide which alerts PerformanceGuard sends as e-mail, and notification recipients are the people who get the e-mails. This page describes the settings on Administration → Event management → Notification rules, Notification recipients, and Unsent notifications.

For a step-by-step walkthrough from event rule to e-mail, see Get E-Mail when Events Happen in Manage Thresholds and Events.

How alerts are matched to notification rules

When an alert rule raises an alert, PerformanceGuard sends an e-mail to the recipients of every notification rule that meets all of these conditions:

The notification rule is enabled.
The alert rule that raised the alert belongs to the rule’s Alert Category.
The alert’s severity is the same as or higher than the rule’s Minimum Alert Severity.
The rule’s Location is Any, or the alert includes events from computers in the selected location.

PerformanceGuard reads changes to alert rules and notification rules about once a minute, so a new or changed rule takes effect within a minute.

Notification rules

Select Administration → Event management → Notification rules to see the list of notification rules. The list shows each rule’s name, description, alert category, minimum alert severity, location, number of recipients, and whether it’s enabled.

To create a rule, click Create new notification rule, fill out the fields, and click Create.
To change a rule, click the edit icon next to it, and then click Save.
To delete a rule, click the delete icon next to it, and then confirm with Delete.

A notification rule has these settings:

Basic Information

Name (required): A name that identifies the rule.
Description: A text that describes the purpose of the rule.
Enabled: Only enabled rules send notifications. Clear the check box to pause a rule without deleting it.

Alert Filter

Alert Category (required): The rule reacts to alerts from the alert rules in this alert category. You assign alert categories to an alert rule in its Alert Categories field. To create your own alert categories, select Administration → Event management → Alert categories.
Minimum Alert Severity: Alerts must have at least this severity to send a notification. See Severity Levels.
Location: Select Any to react to alerts from all locations, or select a location to react only to alerts that include events from computers in that location. See Set Up Locations.

Notification Information

Recipients: The notification recipients who get an e-mail. To select more than one recipient, hold down Ctrl while you click the names. The list only shows recipients that already exist, so create the recipients first.

Notification recipients

Select Administration → Event management → Notification recipients to see the list of recipients. The list shows each recipient’s name, e-mail address, notification type, and summary report setting.

To add a recipient:

Click New notification recipient.
In Name, enter the recipient’s name. You can use up to 50 characters.
In E-mail Address, enter the address that gets the e-mails. You can use up to 80 characters.
Optional: Click Test to send a test e-mail to the address. The result appears at the top of the dialog. If the test fails, check the e-mail address and the SMTP notification service settings.
Leave Email summary reports as it is.
Click Create.

The recipient appears in the list. To use the recipient, select it in a notification rule’s Recipients field.

To change a recipient, click the edit icon next to it. The dialog has these tabs:

Edit recipient: Change the name or e-mail address, or send a test e-mail. Click Save to keep your changes.
Notification Rules: See the notification rules that send e-mail to this recipient. To add the recipient to another rule, select the rule and click Add Notification Rule.
Report Subscriptions: Have custom reports e-mailed to the recipient. See Manage Custom Reports.

To delete a recipient, click the delete icon next to it and confirm.

Unsent notifications

Select Administration → Event management → Unsent notifications to see notification e-mails that PerformanceGuard hasn’t sent yet. For each notification, the list shows when it was created, the alert’s time, ID, severity and alert rule, the notification rule, and the recipient’s name and address.

If notifications stay on the list, PerformanceGuard can’t deliver e-mail. Check the settings in Manage SMTP Notification Service. For more about how e-mail is sent, see E-Mail Delivery.

To cancel all unsent notifications, click Remove all notifications. PerformanceGuard then stops trying to send them.