Henrik Stoerner wrote:

I'm beginning to look at the issue of escalating alerts. And I've had an idea that I'd like to get some feedback on before I go ahead and implement it.

Right now, Hobbit doesn't handle escalating an alert. When someone receives an alert message, they can ack it - when they do, all alerts stop and the item disappears from the "Critical systems" page (the NK page).

BB has the concept of escalating an alert, meaning that some recipients of an alert will get the alert message even if the alert has been acknowledged.

What I'd like to have is the BB system with a finer granularity. A recipient in the hobbit-alerts.cfg file has an associated "level", default is 1.

I want our NOC guys who do nothing but stare at the NK page 24x7 to be able to acknowledge an alert - and that just gets it off their monitor, it doesn't stop alerts from going out. A "level 0" acknowledgment - this is just to log that a trouble ticket has been raised for the issue.

A technician (who is a "level 1" recipient) can acknowledge the alert he receives - this will stop alert messages from going out to other "level 1" receipients, so all of the engineers can concentrate on doing what needs to be done.

Alerts will still be sent to recipients who are "level 2" and above - these are the equivalent of the BB "escalation" alerts. They can ack the alert if they'd like to turn off more alert messages, of course.

You can have even higher levels if you like, probably going up the hierarchy of managers. I don't think we'll using more than the 3 levels I've described, but there is no reason to impose any limit.

Does that sound like it would be useful?

Regards, Henrik

To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk

I like it too. Would there still be a way to ack an alert which stops all alerts to everyone? This way your saying, "I see the alert and I know it's not a problem, so don't alert anyone else in any level."

Similarly, sometimes I would like to say, "I see the alert, but I can't do anything about it right now because I'm on the golf course, so stop alerting me, but continue alerting everyone else, even people in my same level."

Would the recipient levels be set per host? I may be level 1 on one host but level 3 on another.

Somewhat related, one big problem we have is being able to mail ack an alert from a cell phone. When you reply to the message it doesn't keep the subject. But I believe it puts the ack code somewhere in the body. Could Hobbit search the body of the message for "Hobbit [xxxxxx]"? I don't think I've heard anyone else with this problem, am I missing something?

Thanks Henrik.

David Stuffle                       dstuffle at deltafaucet.com
Delta Faucet Company                (317) 571-4301


This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended
solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed.
If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager.
Please note that any views or opinions presented in this email are solely
those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the company.
Finally, the recipient should check this email and any attachments for the
presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused
by any virus transmitted by this email.