SMS / Text and Custom Property

I'm new to SolarWinds so I don't have much experience in configuring it. I like the ability to create Custom Properties to categorize objects and help reduce noise. One thing I would like to try is to use a custom property for is sending texts to an on-call person. I was thinking of creating a custom property called ServerOnCall and setting it to ##########@vtextcom and that adding it to the trigger actions and reset actions of alerts that are critical in our environment to server support personnel. What I'm having a hard time figuring out is how do I make this work on a weekly basis. The on-call person changes every week so the number in the custom property would need to change. I'd only like to have to change the number in one place and then have it propagate to all objects that have the associated custom property (ServerOnCall). Is this possible? Can you setup a custom property like this? Right now I have the custom property setup and I've assigned it to some nodes but I have to manually change it for each node instead of being able to change the value of the custom property and having it propagate to all nodes.

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mesverrum

The easiest way to bulk edit this would be to just go to the edit custom properties page, group by your ServerOnCall property, select all of them that have the "old" number and edit them to put the new one in. Shouldn't take more than 2 minutes.

yourserver/Orion/Admin/CPE/InlineEditor.aspx

Getting way deeper you could fully automate this process if there was something like a spreadsheet containing the on call calendar and some scripted calls to the API to update the properties, but that might be a bit much since you are new to the product. Could also just create a database table directly with the on call data and then set up sql jobs and such to handle this for you automatically. Lots of ways to skin that cat. Get used to things in the GUI and once you are comfortable in the product it makes it easier to get into the inner workings and start manipulating them.

steffen.gutzeit

Hello.

Under "All Settings" you can create and manage custom properties. There you can create one called Admin_Name and specify the names that show up in its drop down menu -> select the nodes (devices) you want to assign this custom property -> assign the admin. A week later you go to the same place and edit the value to change the admin.

The tricky part comes to the alerting though. When you have 3 admins you would need 3 alerts to monitor a status, like

1) trigger condition = cpu higher than 85% AND Admin_Name = Maria | trigger action = send SMS to Maria

2) trigger condition = cpu higher than 85% AND Admin_Name = Peter | trigger action = send SMS to Peter

3) trigger condition = cpu higher than 85% AND Admin_Name = Steffen | trigger action = send SMS to Steffen

On the bright side, you can clone+edit alerts instead of creating them all from scratch.

(Maybe there is even a way of using the custom SWQL alert option to create more sophisticated rules like when Admin_Name=Maria then send SMS to Maria, else if Peter, send to Peter, else if Steffen send to Steffen.)

Tell us how you're getting on.

Good luck,

Steffen