More Advanced Procedures

What are Alerts?

mSuite monitors its own activity and, when it detects certain conditions, raises Alerts to bring these conditions to your attention.

Actionable Alerts, located in the mSuite administration console at Monitoring > Alerts > Actionable Alerts, is a new concept in mSuite5. Like Alerts, the Actionable Alerts notify the administrator of undesirable conditions on the mSuite server. But, unique to Actionable Alerts, is the ability to act on and correct the problem. When an Actionable Alert is raised, a notification icon appears in the system tray - it appears as a blue circle with a white exclamation point in it and includes hover over text with details on the issue. Clicking on the Actionable Alert in the system tray will launch an administration console login. After successful authentication, the console will open to the Actionable Alerts view. Double click on the alert to begin corrective action. The result will be a wizard to guide you through the corrective action(s) related to the error encountered. If the alert causing condition was not corrected at the completion of the wizard and any follow on activity acted upon (such as a service restart) then the alert will pop up again and give the opportunity to re-run the corrective action.

The Alert log section, located in the mSuite administration console at Monitoring > Alerts > Alert Log, is used to view alerts posted by your mSuite system. Alerts are divided into three types:

Error alerts are assigned to conditions that are generally critical in nature and affect your system's ability to operate normally. Error alerts include events such as services failing to start, or lack of communication to the proxy server.

Warning alerts are used to notify the administrator of undesirable conditions or events that are non-critical to overall system health. Examples of Warning alerts include Deployment failures for device packages and Chat Service failures

Information alerts are used to indicate events that are generally accepted as normal operating conditions but may be useful pieces of information when troubleshooting issues on your mSuite server. Examples of Information alerts include successful deployments.

To use the Alert log, highlight Alert Log in the navigation tree. Alerts are shown in the action pane of the console. Double click on any given alert to open the alert properties and learn more about why the alert was raised. Alerts can be sorted by Type, Date/Time, Source, Event, User or Server. Simply click on the value you want to sort by in the row on the top of the alerts action pane to sort by that value. For additional information on alert creation, modification or actionable alerts please click on the appropriate link.

Alert Definitions, located in the administration console at Monitoring > Alerts > Alert Definitions, can be used to create new alerts or modify existing alerts. With Alert Definitions highlighted in the navigation tree, you will see all the currently defined alerts in the action pane.

To create an Alert, go to Monitoring > Alerts > Alert Definitions:

1.	Right mouse click on Alert Definitions in the navigation tree and select New. This launches the Alert Wizard which will guide you through the alert creation process. Press Next to continue.

On the Alert Event Settings page, select the Service you wish to create an alert for. Once the service is selected, click the Event group drop-down to select the type of events you wish to monitor. In the Events box, select all events you wish to trigger this alert. Now set the Selection drop-down to Enable to make the alert active for selected servers, or Disable to prevent the alert from triggering on the server(s) selected. Now select the servers you wish to monitor for this alert condition. Select the All servers to monitor for all mSuite servers. Press Next to continue.

On the Alert Actions page of the wizard, check the Send Mail box if you want an email message to be sent. The mail addresses entered in To: and Cc: will receive an e-mail in the event this alert is triggered. Check the Run program box if you want a contingent program to run in the event the alert was triggered. In the Run program field, enter the path and name of your executable (e.g. c:\scripts\servicerestart.bat) or browse to it using the Browse ... button. If you need to provide administrator permissions for the program or just specific permissions then enter the appropriate account into the Use this account box and click the Set Password ... button to enter the appropriate password. Finally, if you want an mSuite alert to create an entry in the Windows event log, check the box marked Report to Windows event log’ then select Local and/or Server and choose which server. Press Next to continue defining the alert.

On the Alert General Settings page, enter the Name of the alert - this name will appear in the Alert Log if the alert is triggered. The Description field is optional. In Alert type select Error, Warning or Informational depending on your need. Check the Enable box to enable the alert to run and click Next, this takes you to the final page of the wizard, click Finish to exit.

Your alert will now appear in the action pane when Alert Definitions is selected in the navigation tree.

To modify existing alerts, go to Monitoring > Alerts > Alert Definitions:

1.	In the action pane, double-click on the alert and click Next on the Welcome page of the wizard.

On the Alert Event Settings page, you can modify the Service being monitored, the Event group for that service, and select the Events in that event group as desired. You can also select to apply the alert to All servers running mSuite services or just Selected servers. When the desired changes have been made, click Next to continue.

3.	On the Alert Actions page, set the events to be invoked with the alert is triggered. Make changes necessary and press Next to continue.

On the Alert General Settings page you can change the Name of the alert, the alert's Description or the Alert type. When the desired modifications have been made, press Next and then Finish to complete the wizard and save your changes. Your changes are not saved until the wizard completes so make sure to follow the wizard through to the finish button.

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