Alerts tile

The Alerts tile allows you to view and action SCOM alerts on your dashboards and perspectives.

You can add alerts tiles to any dashboard or perspective. Alerts are enabled by default for workspaces and dashboards.

You may also like to watch the Alert Management Webinar.

How to configure an Alerts tile

  1. Add a new tile to a dashboard and choose the Alerts tile.
  2. Select the visualization for your Alerts tile and click next.

  3. Scope:
    The scope section allows you to define the objects for which alerts are shown.
    Tip: The advanced > criteria option is a useful way to narrow down alerts. For example, you can filter the list shown by owner or alert name:
    Owner LIKE 'sales\user1' or Name LIKE '%failed&'
    For more information about using advanced criteria such see How to use criteria when scoping alerts.

  4. Filters:

    The filter section allows you to control which alerts are shown by the tile.

    You can select from severity, priority, source, owner and state:

  5. Timeframe:

    The timeframe section allows you to determine the timeframe for the data. You can choose either to use:

    Use page timeframe

    Specific timeframe

    Custom timeframe

    Timeframe shows alerts which were created in this time period. If you change it to 24 hours hoping to see alerts closed in the last day, you will miss alerts which were created longer ago, even if they were closed in the last day.

  6. Settings for different visualizations:
  7. Click done to save the tile.

    The tile now shows data according to your settings.

Rule alerts vs monitor alerts

Users may not be aware of the differences between monitor and rule alerts, and that monitor alerts should not be closed. SquaredUp DS uses different alert icons for rule and monitor alerts to help users be more aware of these differences.

Monitor alerts

Monitor alerts are shown by a solid icon (like the health state icon, but round) to indicate that the alert is affecting the health state of the object, because the alert has been raised by a monitor.

A monitor alert is 'stateful' and therefore current. A monitor changes the state of the monitor, which then triggers an alert. This means that if the monitor alert is still visible, then it is still a current issue. Once action has been taken, a user can click the reset monitor button to force SCOM to reevaluate the health of the object, and if the issue is re-detected then the alert will be reopened. When the issue is resolved the alert will be closed automatically, so monitor alerts should not be closed manually.

When changing the resolution stateclosed is not the default option, and if a user tries to close a monitor alert a warning is shown and confirmation is required.

Monitor alerts are used to show Health state summaries for unhealthy objects in SquaredUp DS.

Rule alerts

A rule can trigger an alert, but not change the state of the object, or rollup to the parent. A rule alert shows that something has happened in the past, but it won't necessarily happen again. If the issue reoccurs, then the alert RepeatCount increases. Rule alerts should be closed manually when the issue has been resolved.

Rule alerts are shown by a hollow icon (that’s different from the health state icon) the alert is not affecting the health state of the object because it has been raised by a rule. Rule alerts should be closed manually by clicking the resolution state button.

Summary of the differences between rule and monitor alerts

Monitor alerts
Rule alerts
Stateful
Non-stateful
‘There is a problem’
‘There was a problem’
Affects health state of object
Does not affect health state of object
Rollup health to parent object
Does not rollup health to parent object
Changes health state of dashboard
Does not change health state of dashboard
Creates alert (normally)
Creates alert (normally)
Alert stays open while issue remains
RepeatCount incremented if issue reoccurs
Closes alert automatically (normally)
Does not close alert automatically
Can be manually reset back to healthy
Cannot be reset (no state)
Alerts should not be closed manually
Alerts should be closed manually

Health state summaries

Objects and their health state

At the heart of SCOM monitoring is its object model and the health state monitoring of those objects; if a disk is low on space, the disk is marked as critical and this rolls up to the server, which is also marked as critical.

What is a health state summary?

In SquaredUp DS health state summaries are shown for unhealthy (yellow or red) objects. Health state summaries show why an object is yellow or red and show you a summary in-line with the status icon itself. This means that, at a glance, you can see the cause of the critical health state and spot common issues across multiple objects.

If you find several servers are showing red, then the health state summaries can help answer some of your questions:

  • Why is it red?
  • Is it the same reason that the others are red?
  • Is it related to the application issue I'm seeing?
  • Which red server is the priority?
  • Do I have to click on each server to see what the problem is?

Where are Health state summaries available?

Health state summaries are shown wherever an objects health state is shown, for example the Matrix tile, VADA in view and analyze mode, the Alerts tile, and in the Status tile.

Health state summaries are not available for container objects such as groups and distributed applications (DAs), however they work excellently for objects that host things (not contain things) such as servers, devices, software, and their sub-components.

In some cases, you might find that a critical server does not have a health state summary.

How do health state summaries work?

Health state summaries work by performing a lookup for monitor alerts (alerts that are affecting the health state) for each object.

For any object that is not healthy, SquaredUp DSshows the alert that is:

  • Created by a monitor (not a rule – they don’t affect health)
  • Most severe (if it’s critical, it will look for a critical alert)
  • Most recent

What if no health state summary is shown?

  • Some monitors do not create an alert
  • Perhaps the system has closed the alert and it has been groomed out of the Operations Manager database due to a retention setting. In SCOM, under Administration > Settings > Alerts the Automatic Alert Resolution tab shows you how many days after the last modified time (repeat count) from which all active alerts will be resolved, and how many days after the object is healthy that the alert will be resolved.
  • Maybe a user closed the alert? The walkthrough below shows how you can show 'recently closed alerts to help troubleshoot this.

Walkthroughs

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I list only particular alerts?

You can use criteria in the scope > advanced section to list alerts by name or with particular words in the name, for example Name = 'Failed to Connect to Computer' see How to use criteria when scoping alerts.

Can I improve the format of the SCOM Alert emails?

You can enable HTML email notifications in SCOM that link to the Alert in SquaredUp DS see How to enable HTML email notifications in SCOM.

Yes, you can add a hyperlink to the Alert in SquaredUp DS that links to a particular ticket see How to add links to an external ticketing system.

Can I list alerts that have not been linked to a ticket?

You can use criteria in the scope > advanced section to list where the TicketId field is blank, for example TicketId is NULL see How to use criteria when scoping alerts.

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