How do I get an alert to fire off during a specific time period?

I have not had to do time based alerting before so I want to see if I have this correct.

I have a file monitor setup to check a folder on a server for the existence of an XLS file and a corresponding alert setup to send out an email if a file is not found. This works great and I thought we had this working until we met with the app owners.

Here is what happens on their end. File is generated at 20 mins past the hour and sometimes it takes 15-20 mins for the file to get generated and placed in the folder.

Right now alerts have been going out around 30 mins into the hour but then clears with 5-10 mins when the file is placed.

I need to figure out if I can have the alert fire off probably at the top of the hour or maybe the last 20 mins of the hour so they can check.

Right now I setup under Properties to Evaluate the trigger condition every 1 hour. Not sure if this is the correct way to do this or if I should do it in the Trigger condition.

Thanks! -Dave

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Accepted answers

marcrobinson

Lets start by changing the evaluation to 5 minutes, and setting the trigger condition must exist for more than – to 45 minutes in your test system. You can play with that persistence trigger to force the alert to make it is doing something too. Otherwise, you can reverse the logic - if a file shows up - alert. I am recommending that as you may not have a file share to test the condition where nothing shows up. Then, when the alert works the way you want, reverse the logic and you should be good to go.

All comments

marcrobinson

Good description, the actual logic may help if you can post it. Second - you have a fun one. Ok, fun is not quite accurate. You may be able to solve this with alert trigger and reset persistence settings and changing the alert frequency. Create a copy of the alert and have it email just you for testing. Based on the description, a trigger persistence of 30 minutes with alert frequency of five minutes with sam polling rate of five minutes gets you in the 30 - 40 minute alert window. The reset could be immediate.

Thinking about this more, the persistence could be used to only have the trigger alert if NOTHING shows up after an hour. The files show up once an hour and then disappear. While you can alert every hour, it sounds like they need to know if nothing shows up after an hour. The you can have the trigger persistence set to something like 60 minutes, with default polling interval and five minute alert frequency. This eliminates a lot of the email chatter, but when it alerts, something did go wrong. Again, please copy the alert for testing.

martian_monster

I was a good tech and have a stage and prod instance of the alert and monitor setup.

You are correct - They are looking to see if nothing shows up after an hour. The file is generated at 20mins after the hour but sometimes takes 15-20mins to generate.

This is what I have on the alert

marcrobinson

Looking at similar that I have - I used component status = down/up for trigger and reset and specified the component name or id in the scope. This does change it from and application to a component alert though.

martian_monster

Thank you. I made the changes and we will see what happens. I will update the thread when this runs for a few days.