How Threshold Alerts Work

It is important to be aware of changes to environmental conditions in your facilities. Your sensors will monitor those conditions but you cannot have eyes on the application at all times. The Threshold Alert system allows you to set upper or lower bounds for individual measurement types in specific Locations and send notifications to the right users when incoming values cross these breakpoints. This ensures that you are able to respond quickly to changing conditions without needing to constantly check manually.

There are three levels of threshold: Notification, Caution, and Warning.

Each threshold level includes upper and lower bound options.

1. Upper bound alerts will trigger if the relevant measurement is above the set threshold.
2. Lower bound alerts will trigger if the relevant measurement is below the set threshold.

When a sensor reports a measurement that exceeds a configured threshold, any Manager assigned to the relevant path in the Location Hierarchy will receive Alerts. These can be via email, SMS, or web push notifications. For more information please see How to Add a Location Manager.

Note: A Threshold Alert will always display on the Dashboards of relevant Locations.

The frequency of Alerts increases with the level of severity.

1. Notification level thresholds are the least severe. An Alert will be sent immediately, and once every 10 minutes afterwards, until acknowledged.
2. Caution level thresholds indicate cause for concern. An Alert will be sent immediately, and once every 5 minutes afterwards, until acknowledged.
3. Warning level thresholds represent a serious problem. An Alert will be sent immediately and once every minute afterwards, until acknowledged, but will continue to be sent once every 5 minutes until the issue is resolved.

Acknowledgment of an Alert is handled separately for each individual Manager. Even if a Manager acknowledges an Alert, any other assigned Managers will continue to receive that Alert until either they acknowledge it themselves or the measurement value no longer exceeds the Threshold. In order to acknowledge a Threshold Alert, a Manager simply needs to visit the Dashboard for the relevant location by following the link in the Alert or navigating to the Dashboard manually. For more information on how to do this see How to navigate between different locations.

Managers also have the option to snooze an Alert, preventing notifications for that Alert from being sent to them for a set period of time. In order to snooze an Alert, a Manager must:

1. Navigate to the Dashboard of a relevant Location.
2. Find the Alert in question displayed at the top of the Dashboard.
3. Select the period of time that notifications for that Alert will be delayed.
   1. This can be for 15, 30, or 60 minutes respectively.
4. Click on the Alarm icon on the bottom left of the Alert box to confirm.

Note: If the next level of Threshold is triggered it will override the previous Alert and cancel any snooze in effect and start sending notifications for the new Threshold Alert.

Alerts for increasing levels of severity do not stack but will override previous levels. In other words, if a Notification level threshold is triggered the initial Alert will be sent. If the Caution level threshold for the same measurement in the same Location is then triggered, the Notification Alert will be canceled and a Caution Alert will be sent immediately. The same will occur should the applicable Warning level threshold be triggered before the issue is resolved.

While we recommend you follow these guidelines, the bounds for each threshold are fully configurable. A custom message can also be assigned to any notification should you wish to express a specific requirement under the given circumstances.