Using Alerts

Alerts are useful in forewarning you of potential problems before they become a more serious issue. There are two main sections where you can work with alerts, the Overview page and the Alerts Manager. Both can be accessed through the Alerts section in the Tools section of the sidebar. 

Contents

Accessing the Alerts Section

• Click Alerts in the sidebar under the Tools section.

Overview Dashboard

The Overview dashboard always displays the same four widgets:

•  Open Alerts: Shows how many open alerts you have and how many are at each level of criticality.
•  Alerts over last 7 days: Shows how many of each alert you have had over the past 5 days. There are 5 different alert levels of criticality, from Trivial to Critical.
•  Concurrent Plays: Shows the evolution of your total concurrent plays over the last 24 hours.
•  Open/Closed Alerts Manager: Shows a more detailed breakdown of all of your open and closed alerts, including alert name, flow name, status, priority, opened at, opened for, and description.

Alerts Manager

Within the Flow Manager you can create new alert flows to track metrics. You can also see a full list of all the flows you have already made, what sort of alerts are included within them (for static alerts and for smart alerts) and what notification channels are being used.

Creating a New Alert

To create a new alert:

1. Click Alerts in the sidebar and select Alert Manager.
2. Click the Create New Alert button in the top-right corner.
   
   
   
   
3. Enter the Name, Description, and Metric to track.
4. Click Create. The Flow editor opens.

When you first open a new flow, you can see a green card representing the metric you’re making an alert for. From here you can drag, drop and zoom in/out of the interface to better suit your working environment.  The small edit button at the top-right of the green card allows you to change the metric shown.

You can Edit, Save, and Delete the alert using the icons in the top-right corner above the flow editor.

Using the Flow Editor

Once an alert is created, a flow can be built from it to track metrics. Cards can be placed anywhere on the editor interface and linked to each other manually by dragging a line from the plus  icon on the right-side of each card to the relevant icon on the left side of another card. The functionality of a card can be configured by clicking the tool icon at the top-right of the card.

• Green cards: Indicates the metric for which you are setting the alert.
   

  Note

  Green cards cannot be linked directly with blue cards.

• Red cards: Indicates the Static (configured manually using levels of criticality, thresholds and deep filtering) or Smart alerts (intelligent anomaly detector capable of detecting irregular platform behavior based on historical data). The name of these cards can be changed by double-clicking it. 
• Blue cards: Indicates the notification channels. The name of these cards can be changed by double-clicking it. 

Creating a Static Alert

Static Alerts are useful to inform you of the performance of particular metrics and to issue alerts at specified thresholds. Static Alerts allows you to set your alerts based on your experience and business rules or goals. Static Alerts are available for the following metrics:

• Plays
• Active Plays
• EBVS (%)
• Buffer Ratio
• Interruptions
• Startup Errors (%)
• In-Stream Errors (%)
• Avg. Bitrate (Mbps)
• Happiness Score
• Join Time

To create a static alert:

1. Create an alert.
2. When the Flow editor opens, drag and drop a Static Alert onto the flow editor area and connect it to the alert. See Using the Flow Editor.
   
   
   
   
3. Click the Edit icon at the top-right corner of the card. The Alert editor is displayed. The graph on the right shows different figures depending on the configuration parameters that you enter.
   
   
   
   
4.  Click Add Filter to select the filter that is to be applied:

   • If multiple options are selected within one dimension, an alert is launched for every option.

   • If multiple options are selected from multiple dimensions, an alert is only launched if the combination of those two dimensions meets the threshold.

5.  Click Add Group to configure alerts for any option within a dimension.
   
   

   Note

   When selecting multiple options (up to five), be aware that option 1 and option 2 must be met for the alert to be triggered.

6.  Click Type to specify whether these conditions applied to LIVE or VOD events.

7.  If necessary, click Add Threshold to add up to five threshold levels for the notifications:

   •  Priority: Indicate the priority of the alert (Critical, Major, Warning, Minor, Trivial).

   •  Check by: Specify how the data should be checked (either for values above or below specified)

   •  Value: Specify the value against it must be checked.

   • Duration: Specify the duration upon which the alert must be sent.

8. Once you have entered the necessary data for the configuration of the alert, click Save .
9. Next, enable the alert by using the toggle  at the top-right corner of the wizard. See Creating Calendar Rules for Notifications and Adding Notification Methods to tailor your alert further.

You can Clone and Delete the alert using the icons in the top-right corner above the Flow editor .

Creating a Smart Alert

Smart Alerts allow you to set thresholds for when a Smart Alert should be issued and specify delivery methods. The anomaly detector reads real-time data during streaming and determines whether these events are anomalous and warrant a root cause analysis, such as: 

• EBVS (%)
• Join Time
• Buffer Ratio
• Startup Error (%)

• In-Stream Error (%)
  
  

To create a Smart Alert:

1. Create an alert that could warrant root cause analysis.
2. When the Flow editor opens, drag and drop a Smart Alert onto the Flow editor area and connect it to the alert. See Using the Flow Editor.
   
   
   
   
3. Click the Edit  icon. The configuration pane opens. Configuring this card gives you the option to filter the content you are creating an alert for using dimensions and video type. Choose which categories you wish to group by and the anomaly detector finds areas at fault.
   
   
   
   
4. Click the Type drop-down menu and select from: ALL, VOD, or LIVE.
5. Select how you would like alerts to be grouped. For example, by location or protocol.
6. When you configured the Smart Alert, click Save.
7. Next, enable the alert by using the toggle at the top-right corner of the wizard. See Creating Calendar Rules for Notifications and Adding Notification Methods to tailor your alert further.

You can Clone and Delete the alert using the icons in the top-right corner above the Flow editor.

Creating Calendar Rules for Notifications

Use the Calendar rules, to configure when alert notifications are sent.

To set calendar rules for an alert:

1. Drag and drop the yellow Calendar  icon on the Static/Smart alert card .

2. Check the checkbox(es)  for the days of the week you want to be notified.

3. Adjust the timespans  of the days of the week to specify when you want to be notified.

4. Click Save .

You can Delete the alert notification using the icon  in the top-right corner.

Adding Notification Methods

You can also add alert notification mechanisms by adding Notification cards in the Flow editor. Possible notification mechanisms include:

• Email: Select which email addresses you would like to send notifications.
  

• SNMP: Select which SNMP contacts you would like to send notifications.

• Slack: Select which Slack contacts you would like to send notifications. 

• PagerDuty: Select which PagerDuty contacts you would like to send notifications.

• Callback: Select which Callback URL you would like to send notifications.

To add a notification mechanism:

1. Drag and drop the email icon and connect it to the output (right side) of the static/smart alert card.
2. Enter the address of the recipient. 
3. To add additional addresses, click the Add New button.
4. When finished, click Save. 

You can Clone and Delete the alert using the icons in the top-right corner above the card.