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Alerts can be used to notify recipients about status changes to your checks. They can be sent by email address, SMS messages, or integrated 3rd party serviceabout status changes to your checks. They can be sent by email address, SMS messages, or integrated 3rd party service.
| Info |
|---|
Complex alerting setups can be tricky. If you have any questions about alert configuration, please send a support ticket to support@apica.io, and we will help you with the setup and testing process. |
Here’s an example of some configured recipients, some of which are disabled: |  |
Alerts configured for a browser check, all enabled: |  |
Note: The alerts are all enabled, but since most of the targets are disabled, alerts will be triggered but not sent for these.
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Create or Add a User to receive the alerts (Who gets the alert?).
Create Targets for the recipients' delivery method (How are the alerts delivered? e.g., PagerDuty, SMS Text, Email, etc.).
(Optional) Create a Group containing multiple recipients for the alert.
Create the Alerts themselves by selecting checks and assigning recipients.
Step | Screenshot | ||
|---|---|---|---|
Add RecipientsThe Users and Groups you set to receive Alerts are set up in the Recipients tab. There is a column to define Users and their contact information, as well as Groups. |  | ||
First Step: Add a UserRecipients are the users or groups of users you select to receive the alerts.
|     | ||
Second Step: Add GroupRecipient groups are collections of user targets you select to receive the alerts.
Create GroupTo add a recipient group:
|    | ||
TargetsWhen defining alert recipients, you can have the message delivered via various target services. For each User or Group Recipient, you add delivery Targets that define the method of delivery. UserYou can select to add PagerDuty, Email, a WebHook integration, or SMS (text message) as targets. GroupsWhen you have defined targets for individual users, you can add them to Groups: |    | ||
Alerts TabThe Alerts tab allows you to set Severity, Targets (individual users), and Groups (of users) to review alerts according to the parameters you prefer. Alerts can be set for individual checks and be delivered to multiple Targets. |  | ||
Add AlertYou can add alerts for any checks and select one or several severities to include in the alert. Each alert can have multiple Recipients, and each recipient can have multiple Targets. Create Alert To add an alert:
OR:
| 
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Configuring Different Alerting Types
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| Note |
|---|
Depending on what the purpose is, two placeholder characters denote an Apica placeholder.
|
Message Placeholders
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A placeholder has the following format:
%placeholder-name%
There is a set of predefined placeholders configured in ASM:
Placeholder | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
Event-based Placeholders | ||
%E% | Event symbol. For check-based events, this is the CheckConfig.check_symbol value. | N84_M377_C1000_URL_20090227_013715_307 |
%M% | Event message text. | Message |
%N% | The NETBIOS name of the host is the source of the event. | Node |
%QM% | Event message text with any double-quotes (") replaced by single-quotes ('). | Message |
%S% | Event severity as one upper-case character, I, W, E, or F. | Severity |
%SEV% | Event severity as one word, Info, Warning, Error, or Fatal. | Severity |
%T% | Agent-local timestamp. Format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. | Timestamp |
%UTC-T% | UTC timestamp with a 'T' between the date and time portions. Format YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS. | Timestamp (UTC) |
%UTC% | The timestamp of the event is expressed in UTC. Format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. | Timestamp (UTC) |
For Check-based Events, Use the Following Placeholders | ||
%CHECK_ID% | Check id (32-bit positive integer from CheckConfig.id) | |
%CHECK_GUID% | Check GUID. | A UUID from CheckConfig.check_guid, in the format XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX |
%CHECK_NAME% | Check descriptor (from CheckConfig.check_descriptor) | |
%CHECK_TYPE% | Check descriptor (based on CheckConfig.check_type) | URL, Command, Ping, Port, Scenario, Fullpage (IE), or Fullpage |
%MODULE_NAME% | Check module descriptor (from NodeModule.amm_descriptor) | |
%OLD_SEV_CHAR% | Previous check severity as an uppercase letter | (I, W, E, or F) |
%NEW_SEV_CHAR% | Current check severity as an uppercase letter | (I, W, E, or F) |
%OLD_SEV_WORD% | Previous check severity as a word | (Info, Warning, Error or Fatal) |
%NEW_SEV_WORD% | Current check severity as a word | (Info, Warning, Error or Fatal) |
%RESULT_GUID% | Check Result UUID without dashes. Replaced by an empty string if no result identifier is part of the event. | a8e59d718fa949cb86c9ccfc93ff1876 |
%RESULT_G-U-I-D% | Check Result UUID with dashes. Replaced by an empty string if no result identifier is part of the event. | a8e59d71-8fa9-49cb-86c9-ccfc93ff1876. Replaced by an empty string if no result identifier is part of the event. |
%TT% | Timestamp adjusted to the timezone of the current dispatch target (maybe based on user/customer). Falls back to UTC. | Format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (TZ-offset) or YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS if UTC. |
%CHECK_TAGS% | A set of Key, Value pairs assigned to the check. | "Key 1: Value 1, Value 2, Value 3; Key 2: Value 1, Value 2, Value 3" |
Placeholders that may be available if the Alerter uses a check information cache | ||
%CHECK_DESCRIPTION% | Check description (from CheckConfig.check_description). For CLI-targets, any embedded carriage return/newline (CR/LF) character combinations (\r\n) s are replaced by a space, then the remaining CR and LF are replaced by empty strings. | |
%xmlsafe:CHECK_DESCRIPTION% | Check description (from CheckConfig.check_description) with any XML-unsafe characters replaced by character entities. | e.g. & -> &. Same rules apply for embedded CR and LF as for %CHECK_DESCRIPTION%. |
%GROUPS% | List of monitor groups to which the check belongs. A comma-separated list of "top group/subgroup" entries. Since a check can be associated with more than one monitor group (possibly belonging to different users), the list can contain more than one entry. | |
Event-Related Placeholders
Placeholder | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
%E% | Event symbol. For check-based events, this is the CheckConfig.check_symbol value. |
|
%M% | Event message text. | |
%QM% | Event message text with any double-quotes (") replaced by single-quotes ('). | |
%S% | Event severity as one upper-case character, I, W, E, or F. | |
%SEV% | Event severity as one word, Info, Warning, Error, or Fatal. | |
%UTC% | The timestamp of the event is expressed in UTC. | Format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. |
%UTC-T% | UTC timestamp with a 'T' between the date and time portions. | Format YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS. |
Check-related Placeholders
Placeholder | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
%CHECK_DESCRIPTION% | Check description. For CLI-targets, any embedded carriage return/newline (CR/LF) character combinations (\r\n) are replaced by a space, then the remaining CR and LF are replaced by empty strings. | |
%CHECK_GUID% | Check GUID. | A UUID in the format XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX. |
%CHECK_ID% | Check ID. | |
%CHECK_NAME% | Check name. | |
%CHECK_TAGS% | A set of Key: Value pair(s) assigned to the check, with the format: "Key 1: Value 1, Value 2, Value 3; Key 2: Value 1, Value 2, Value 3" | |
%CHECK_TYPE% | Check descriptor. | URL, Command, Ping, Port, Scenario, Fullpage (IE), or Fullpage |
%GROUPS% | List of monitor groups to which the check belongs. | A comma-separated list of "top group/subgroup" entries. Since a check can be associated with more than one monitor group (possibly belonging to different users), the list can contain more than one entry. |
%LOCATION% | The location from which the check is executed. | |
%NEW_SEV_CHAR% | Current check severity as an uppercase letter. | (I, W, E or F) |
%NEW_SEV_WORD% | Current check severity as a word. | (Info, Warning, Error or Fatal) |
%OLD_SEV_CHAR% | Previous check severity as an uppercase letter. | (I, W, E or F) |
%OLD_SEV_WORD% | Previous check severity as a word. | (Info, Warning, Error or Fatal) |
%RESULT_G-U-I-D% | Check Result UUID with dashes. Replaced by an empty string if no result identifier is part of the event. | a8e59d71-8fa9-49cb-86c9-ccfc93ff1876. Replaced by an empty string if no result identifier is part of the event. |
%RESULT_GUID% | Check Result UUID without dashes. Replaced by an empty string if no result identifier is part of the event. | a8e59d718fa949cb86c9ccfc93ff1876. |
%TT% | Timestamp adjusted to the timezone of the current dispatch target (maybe based on user/customer). Falls back to UTC. | Format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (TZ-offset) or YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS if UTC. |
%xmlsafe:CHECK_DESCRIPTION% | Check description with any XML-unsafe characters replaced by character entities. | Check description (from CheckConfig.check_description) with any XML-unsafe characters replaced by character entities, e.g. & -> & Same rules apply for embedded CR and LF as for %CHECK_DESCRIPTION%. |
Webhook Placeholders
Default placeholders are surrounded by a pound/hashtag # character.
A default set of placeholders has been provided. These can be configured with the Webhook alert integration, or you may customize your Webhook placeholders as necessary.
Placeholder | Used For/Definition/Comment |
|---|---|
| |
| Slack, ServiceNow |
| VictorOps, OpsGenie, Datadog |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| HipChat, VictorOps |
| Splunk |
|
Defining Your Own Webhook Placeholders in Custom Webhooks
The default placeholders above should only be considered suggestions. It is also possible to define your own webhook placeholders, which will pull their value from some response content which comes back from an API call. These custom-defined placeholders are also surrounded by a pound/hashtag # character.
Consider the following example:
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Here, after the main alert text is sent to Slack (via hooks.slack.com), a second URL call is made to https://api-wpmasm-eu1.apicasystemapica.comio/. It is a GET request which returns response data in JSON format:
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Essentially, in the above example, when the GET request is resolved, the value of #url# becomes whatever is found in the “url” property of the response body. In the above example, the recipient of the check will instantly know that the check goes to https://www.msn.com.
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.