"All objects in my environment" isn't

jaybone

NPM 12, which has been through multiple upgrades from previous versions.

Looking into why a newly-added node wasn't generating alerts, I noticed something I don't understand.

The alert that I was assuming would be triggered has a scope of "all objects in my environment."

If I dig into the Show List link, it only shows 86 objects.  We actually have almost 300 nodes, not 86.

Digging more, I checked another alert definition that is set to only alert on specific nodes, clicking on the Show List link next to "all objects..." that one only lists 147. 

If I create a new alert and click the Show List link next to "all objects..." then it actually has all currently-existing nodes.

So, it seems like the "all objects in my environment" option actually only means "all objects in my environment right now, but nothing that gets added in the future?"

Am I just completely missing something, here?

jaybone

Am I just completely missing something, here?

Yes.  I was.

In case anyone else runs into this...

Turns out that these old rules were using 'not equal' logic to compare against fields that are typically not used anymore - i.e. they're left blank unless there's some reason to populate them, whereas in the past they had been randomly used... or not.  Seems to have depended on who added the node, what other 23423 things they were doing at the same time, etc.

When using a not equal comparison, rows that have that field null are not returned in the result.

So, taking my 86-object example above, the comparison was Department <> DeptA.  The 86 resulting nodes were all ones that had been added way back when, marked as DeptB, DeptC, etc.  All of the nodes added later on which had no Department value were not part of the set returned.