Desktop Notifications for Orion

I like it!!!  How did you do it?

ok, this looks like growl for windows: Growl for Windows running on the desktop

how do you get the alert manager to talk to it?

As RichardLetts already surmised this is Growl for Windows running on my desktop. I use the execute a script action in alerts to pass variables to a batch file that then executes a small program called growlnotify that sends the notifications to the desktop application. You can then let other users install Growl for Windows and subscribe to these notifications on the desktop receiving them so you don't have to send the notifications to each user via the script.

I will write up a quick tutorial on how I accomplished this soon.

Cheers

GrowlNotify for Windows

It's not too difficult to figure out. You can pass variables to a batch script and parse them out in to the notification text that then executes the GrowlNotify application to send the actual notifications to Growl including a url for when the notification is clicked. As I mentioned to ds2acrvet I will update the post with a small tutorial on how I accomplished this soon.

Cheers

I'd love to see the tutorial, I'm trying to do something very similar in my test environment.

I basically need an alert to display on desktop machines when a node goes down or comes up, so that the desktop operators are alerted directly when that event occurs as opposed to relying on them to review the Nodes with Problems window on a browser. If they are away from their desk or decide to minimize the browser window, they could miss alerts. I need the alert to force a user to intervene and thus acknowledge that the alert occurred.

Awaiting your detailed reply (scripting is not my strong point so a step-by-step would be very much appreciated!).

I would love to see how this is done as well. Are you able to give us some hints?

I cannot contact the OP because I'm not his friend on the forums. So unfortunately we just have to hope he comes back.and does his tutorial. This is the only forum I know that doesn't allow PMs to be sent between users by default.

Something like this we would use also. SolarWinds can you make something like this integrated into the applications, or as a separate application?

I've reproduced this in my environment.

1. install Growl for Windows on your Orion server (or other server); this will act as the rendezvous point for the client growl installs

    set this up to allow clients to subscribe to alerts (pick a password they will use)

2. install Growl for Windows on your clients, and configure them to subscribe to alerts from the Orion server

3. add a rule to your alerts to trigger the growlnotify command for new alerts:

C:\xxxx\xxxx\growlnotify.com /a:"Orion"  /c:NodeDown${Nodeid} /t:"Node Down" /host:XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX /pass:"XXXXXX" "${NodeName} ${Caption} ${Building} ${IP_Address}"

* if you play around with the growl notify command line you can send an icon to be used in subsequent alerts to the "Orion" application

the /c.... option allows you to over-write a previous growl notice, so missed node popups get replaced with a new message

/host is the host you installed growl on in (1) if not the Orion server

/pass is the password to use, if not the Orion server.

/t is the title of the alert

the string at the end is the message to display; use  \n for a newline.

(in my case we have a NOC control PC that drives our large screen displays, so the growl rendezvous server is installed there.)

/RjL

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the write up - I've followed your process and got the machines talking to each other via Growl. The client is subscribed to growl on the Solarwinds Server I have and all passwords etc are set up.

I can see that there is nothing under the Applications tab on growl, it says 'no applications have registered yet'.

I am not seeing alerts for nodes that are down at the moment.

I've created an alert in Advanced Alert Manager and enabled it - the alert is to execute an external program and I've put a network path closely following your own.

My path looks like this: C:\Program Files (x86)\Growl for Windows\growlnotify.com /a:"OrionServersFQDN"  /c:NodeDown${Nodeid} /t:"A Network Node is Down!" /host:10.154.100.1 /pass:"mypass" "${NodeName} ${Caption} ${Building} ${IP_Address}"

To test that Growl connectivity is there, I disconnect my test machine from the network and reconnect it. On the other subscribed machines, I see a popup to say that machine XYZ has subscribed to notifications. So that part of it is definitely working, but I get nothing when the node drops, making me think that either the command or the Alerts config is wrong.

After /a I've put the FQDN of the Orion server. Is that correct? Or should it say "Orion"? Can you give us more detail on how you configured Orion Advanced Alerts?

Thanks in advance