Notifications menu (emails, alerts, SMS)

[KelAuth]

Emails, Dashboard alerts and SMS notifications

Community / Light reports do not include email notifications or dashboard alerts. Simply log into the dashboard to see how the Internet service is doing.

The following is available when the reports are optionally upgraded to Extended.

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Our goal is to prevent spamming while giving members control over notifications and alerts.

There are three ways of being notified, email, dashboard alerts and SMS. Available options depend on the level of reports as explained above.
If an option is grayed out, it means it is not available for this level of reports. In some cases, this could require an upgrade or the option is available to Enterprise level members only.

IMPORTANT: Please read and understand inactive notifications before enabling them.

More on statuses and their meanings can be found here.
Howto: Internet outages, alerts and agent statuses

Extended upgrades offer the ability to enable/disable both email notifications and dashboard alerts. SMS is reserved for Enterprise level members and limited to US use only.

Up to three emails/SMS will be sent at which time, logging in to re-enable notifications is required. This is done to prevent spamming members with too many emails/SMS.

Usage

Enable/disable the types of notifications/alerts wanted using the sliders then adding a check mark to each item wanted.

Enter the Email address that should receive email alerts. Be sure to use a working email address and if needed, whitelist outages.io, outagesio.com and unrealmachines.com with the receiving mail provider if the email lands in the spam/junk folder. Whitelisting will help prevent emails from going to the spam/junk folder.

If using SMS, enter +1 then the full number of the receiving mobile without spaces or dashes.

Inactive - PLEASE READ CAREFULLY

This agent (or location) has not communicated in at least 20 seconds and is now considered Inactive.

Typically, inactive are only enabled when monitoring a location very closely. Inactive notifications are sent any time the agent has not communicated with the OutagesIO network for around 19 seconds or so. It is important to keep in mind that standard settings have the agent communicating around every 10/15 seconds.

If for any reason, it is unable to connect to the OutagesIO network, an inactive will be generated. However, inactive events do NOT imply an outage, only that the agent was unable to reach the OutagesIO network.
If an outage is in progress or has occurred, the report will be sent as soon as the agent is able to communicate again.

The following are the average timings of status changes

Active - up to 19 sec (from last trace)

Inactive - from 20 sec to 29 min 59 sec (from last trace)

Disconnected - from 30 min to 29 days 23 hours 59 min 59 sec (from last trace)

If enabled in the wrong conditions, inactive notifications could quickly overwhelm someone that is monitoring the location, If the location is non critical, it is best not to enable inactive notifications and to check the reports now and then on a regular basis.

Agent back online

This is especially useful when we know a location is no longer communicating but want to know if it starts up again. An example might be a long trip saved from having to send someone because the service came back before doing so.

Disconnected

This agent (or location) has not communicated for at least 30 minutes.

Outages

This agent has sent a confirmed outage event report.

Unauthorized port (Hardware agents only)

Our monitoring system has discovered unauthorized ports open at this locations firewall. (See Security scanning)

Low bandwidth

This location is experiencing bandwidth that is lower than the set limit. (See Speed test)

Sensor (Hardware agents only - if equipped with optional environment sensor)

This location is experiencing an environment condition limit that you have set.

Environment conditions include temperature, humidity, pressure, light, barometric, sound, air quality, vibration and seismic.

Dashboard alerts

Dashboard alerts can be useful if you prefer not to receive emails because you are monitoring on a very regular basis. These alerts are dashboard only and all alerts will be saved in your Historical menu.

The main purpose behind alerts are to ensure that any event being monitored is acknowledged and that a historical trail of what was done exists. The history is shown in the Historical menu which opens up with Extended reports.

This can be helpful when multiple people are managing agents at different locations such as an IT support, MSP's and others.

When an alert is displayed in the dashboard, someone has to acknowledge it.

Once acknowledged, its status color changes from red to yellow.

Then, a reason for closing the alert must be entered such as what happened, what was done, who did it and so on.

The historical details of each event includes a history of alerts, who dealt with each and what was done.

Note that most people who use this option are IT people that want a historical trail of activities. If you enable this option, keep in mind that this is historical and does not represent the current status of your agent. The heartbeat is the live status of your agent.

Outages vs Inactive agent

Inactive notifications are meant to alert you of an event. If the event is an outage, the agent will send its report as soon as it can reach the Internet again. If the event doesn't eventually show an outage, it means your agent was unable to communicate over the Internet for some other reason. Something was turned off, disconnected, bad wiring, any number of things. If it seems unknown, then let the agent run and you should eventually see a trend and find the problem.

Outage report lost

Never turn off an agent if your Internet seems down otherwise, the agent will lose the report it would have otherwise sent.

You can learn more about agent statuses.
About: Inactive / Excessive outages and notifications
and here About: Internet outages, alerts and agent statuses

Please do not flag notifications as spam

Online services face a challenge. People sign up to see how things work then often flag their own notifications as spam rather than logging in to disable them. This behavior can cause others using the same mail service to miss their notifications. Please flag responsibly and log into services you've signed up to and disable emails.