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Custom Email Alert Template

I have a need to customize the dpa email alert template for automation purposes.

I have figured out what I needed to do for everything except for the time range of the alert like this:

Anomalies were detected in the hours between 01/29/2026 10:00 AM and 01/29/2026 11:00 AM:

CRITICAL

01/29/2026 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

ideally I need to customize the time stamp to include ISO formatting with timezone offset.

I was able to format the time stamp for execution time with this:

[=alert.executionTime?datetime?string("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssXXX")]

Does anyone know how the above message is generated in the default template, or where that template is stored?

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Accepted answers

darichar

Sorry, there is not one format for dpa.body as it changes for each type of alert and I don't have any publicly available documentation about it.

All comments

Lofstrand

Hi there

What Alert Type are we talking about here?

And I guess there is a variable that give you the lines you want to modify, what is that? Have you found out?

AccidentalDBA

This specific alert I was working on is for database wait time anomaly but am needing a template that will cover similar message text for other alerts.

I think I found that the above message in the email alert comes from the variable [=dpa.body] which is I think is a custom compound variable that solar winds has implemented internally.

What I have gone with so far is to implement the execution time in iso format with an offset and then added the [=dpa.body] variable at the end of the template with the comment that the time zones are in the local time zone (we use an AI tool to parse alerts to put up flags on our noc dashboard) but have not yet been able to test it; The email preview tool does not render templates correctly or completely and I haven't had an alert state since submitting this post and don't know if it will work yet, but will post back if I get the next one to see if that is what I need

darichar

That is correct, the dpa.body element contains the message contents including times. So unfortunately you will not be able to manipulate the time component separately.

AccidentalDBA

Is there a definition anywhere in the dpa application files for the freemarker code that is used to construct [=dpa.body]?

darichar

Sorry, there is not one format for dpa.body as it changes for each type of alert and I don't have any publicly available documentation about it.

AccidentalDBA

Understood. Hopefully with what I have been able to put together so far will be adequate