The Smart Alerts engine tracks a specified data point as it changes per data refresh or per the specified schedule of the alert. The historical values are tracked and run through time series machine learning algorithms to create a projection of where new values should fall. When real values fall dramatically outside the expected tolerance range, an alert is triggered to the user.
Smart Alerts cannot operate until sufficient data has been accumulated for the projection. This is typically around 6-12 data points.
Tip: Alerts can be configured in Discover and in Present at runtime.
The Alerts feature is available with Enterprise licensing only. Smart Alerts is licensed separately.
The following video demonstrates Alerts:
Building an Alert
Before you begin
Alerts can only be configured for saved discoveries, so start by saving your visual. If your visual includes unsaved changes, the Build New Alert option will be disabled on the right-click menu.
Setting up Smart Alerts
- Right-click the relevant data point (that is, a grid cell, a chart column, and so on) to open the context menu.
- From the context menu, open the Build New Alert sub-menu and choose Use Smart Alert.
- Configure the alert from the Alert dialog (continue reading to learn how).
Tip: To build an alert for multiple cells in the query, you can use the selection or lasso tool to select the relevant cells, and then right-click the selection to open the context menu.
If you don't want to create a Smart Alert and actually want to receive a Basic Alert (notifying you when the value of the given data point is up, the same, or down), see Alerts Builder in Discover.
You can see information about alerts from the Bulletin Board and the Alerts Feed.
Alert dialog (Smart Alerts)
Open the context menu on the relevant data point or points and select Build New Alert > Use Smart Alert to open the Alert dialog:
Common Fields
- Name: Name your alert; by default, it is named according to the members in the given data point.
- When: Displays the given data point for which an alert will be triggered.
- Is: This drop-down provides a simple way to set up the alert logic trigger based on your selected data points. Because you selected Use Smart Alerts, this defaults to Smart Detection. For details about the other options, see Alerts Builder in Discover.
Smart Alert Settings
The settings here work together to specify your forecast value (created using the algorithm) and the tolerance that you want to apply when creating alerts based on actual values relative to that forecast:
- Date-Time Selection: A time sequence for your Smart Alert tracking. For example, if your product data includes a shipping date you can track changes to the data point values based on that.
- Range Intervals: The "tolerance" in the system when deciding whether to trigger the alert; that is, how close the actual value needs to get to the predicted value before the alert is triggered.
- Algorithm: The algorithm that should be used to create the forecast.
- Lookback Period: How many periods should we lookback over to create the forecast.
Alerting Details
- Message: Fixed value. The message is auto-generated for Smart Alerts.
- Outcome Status: The alert outcome that should be shown when the alert runs. The icon does not indicate if the alert was successful or not. For example, an alert that measures things that produce "good news," should have the green outcome icon - so when the user gets the message, they see that there is good news.
- Run me: When to run the alert. You should either select a preset schedule from this drop-down or select Advanced from the bottom-left corner of the dialog to configure an advanced alert.
- Send To: Choose where you want to receive the alerts. This can be one of Bulletin Board, email, SMS, or channel Webhook. Note that email and SMS can only be selected if messaging is enabled from the Admin console. The basic alert builder allows you to send alerts to yourself only. If you want to distribute the alert to other users, configure an advanced alert.
One of the preset options is On Demand. You can use on demand scheduling to trigger the alert to run whenever the underlying data model is reprocessed. Important: You must also configure on demand subscriptions for the relevant data models via the Master Flow or APIs.
Advanced
If you want to configure an Advanced Alert, you should select the Advanced checkbox in the bottom-left of the dialog.
Note: This is not available with the Community edition.
Data Source Authentication
If you’re using Windows Authentication or SAP Logon Tickets to connect to your data source, you may be prompted to enter Authentication credentials when saving your changes.
- Click here to learn more about Data Source Authentication.
Managing Alerts
Once an alert has been created, it can be managed from the content manager, through the related content item's Action Panel.
- Click here for more on the Alert Manager tools in the content manager.