Alerts Overview

Alerts represent new instances of events or de-duplicated events that have been created by Moogsoft Enterprise. You can view these in filterable and sortable lists, via the Side Menu links, from the Search bar or by looking within Situation Rooms.

The highest severity alert within a Situation determines the severity of a Situation. Alerts follow the same severity levels as Situations.

Alert views

The My Alerts View displays all of the alerts that have been assigned to you. The Open Alerts view displays all open alerts that are yet to be resolved.

Select refresh rate

You can choose how frequently you want your Situations View to refresh. Click on Real Time and select an option from the drop-down list.

Moogsoft Enterprise remembers the refresh rate that you selected when you log in again.

Pause alerts and Situations

Alert details

You can explore the forensic details of an alert in Alert Details:

The individual column names and their descriptions are listed in the table below:

Name	Description
Active Situations	All active Situations to which this alert is linked.
Agent Host	The IP address or co-ordinates of the geographic location where the events were detected.
Agent Name	The name of the monitor that detected the Events. Frequently a sub-category of Manager.
Alert Id	This is the numeric identifier given to the alert.
Class	The subcategory of the Agent.
Count	The number of events in the alert.
Description	A text summary or description of the alert.
Entropy	The entropy value (between 0 and 1).
External Id	The external ID given by another management system to reference the alert.
First Event Time	The time of the first event that Moogsoft Enterprise recorded.
Host	The source where the alert originated.
Internal Last Event Time	The internal time recorded within the last event itself.
Last Change	The time of the last change to the alert.
Last Event Time	The time of the last Event that Moogsoft Enterprise recorded.
Manager	The system sending the alert.
Owned By	The username of the User who owns the alert.
Severity	The severity of the alert.
Significance	The significance of the alert.
Situations	The Situations that the alert is associated with.
Source Id	The unique number of the source being managed.
Status	The status of the alert.
Type	The alert type. For example, DBFail, HTTPDDown, LinkDown.

You can copy the Alert Details by clicking and dragging across the text to highlight it. You can use Ctrl+C (⌘+c on Mac) to copy the text. This can be pasted in an external editor or tool as required.

Custom info

You can view custom fields for the alert in the Custom Info tab. This appears in a page tree format. Click the drop-down arrows to view the properties beneath each branch.

Screen Shot 2018-07-03 at 3.14.36 PM.png

Administrators can add custom info fields during system configuration. They can also add custom info fields with a Situation Client Tool using a JSON snippet under the 'Merge Custom Info' field.

Configure an alert view

Use the View menu to customize which field columns are displayed in My Alerts or Open Alerts or an Alert filter view. Click View in the top right corner of the screen to view and select the options in the drop-down menu:

View options

The top option, 'Alert Row Striping', changes the filter display and each alert row is colored stripe depending on its severity:

You can add or remove the following alert columns by checking or unchecking the options in the View drop-down menu:

Column	Description
Active Situations	Any active Situations the alerts are linked to.
Agent Host	IP address or co-ordinates of the geographic location where the events were detected.
Agent Name	Name of the monitor that detected the events, frequently a sub-category of Manager.
Alert Id	Numeric alert ID.
Class	Subcategory of the Agent.
Count	Number of times this alert has been counted.
Description	A text summary or description of the alert.
Entropy	Entropy value of the alert, a number between 0 and 1.
External Id	External ID given by another management system to reference the alert.
First Event Time	Time when the alert's first event was recorded.
Host	Source where the alert originated.
Internal Last Event Time	The last time and date there was an internal change to the alert.
Last Change	The last time and date there was a change to the alert.
Last Event Time	Time when the alert's last event was recorded.
Manager	System sending the alert.
Owned By	User that owns the alert.
Significance	Significance of an alert, whether it is Collateral, Related, Impacting or Causal).
Situations	All of the Situations that the alert is linked to.
Source Id	The unique name of the source being managed.
Status	Alert status, whether it is Unassigned, Assigned or Acknowledged.
Type	Alert type. For example, DBFail, HTTPDDown or LinkDown.

Change columns and rows

To change the width of a column:

Hover your mouse cursor over the line between the columns in the heading row.
Click and drag it to increase or decrease the width of the column.

To change the order of the columns:

Click and hold down the heading cell of the column you want to move.
Drag the heading to a new location in the heading row. Two green arrows indicate if the move is valid.

To change the sort order of the alerts:

Click the column heading. Click once to display them in ascending alphabetical and numerical order, or click twice to display them in descending order.

You can sort on up to four columns including the ID. In addition to your selected sort columns, Moogsoft Enterprise automatically adds ID as the final sort priority. For example, to sort on Description and Host:

Click the Host column heading.
Then click the Description column heading.
The alerts are sorted by Description, then Host and then ID.

Alert tools menu

You can perform other actions on an alert or a group of alerts using the Tools menu or the right-click menu.

To perform an action available on the Tools menu:

To select an alert or multiple alerts, click the checkboxes in the far left column.
Click Tools or right-click on the alert list.
Select the action you want to use.

The following actions are available on the Tools menu:

Action	Options	Description
Export	Filename: String Format: CSV (Comma Separated Values) JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) Export: All Rows Selected Rows	Exports a row, multiple selected rows or all rows in CSV or JSON format.
Own	-	Makes you the owner of the selected alert or alerts.
Assign	-	Assigns the selected alert or alerts to a user, subject to permissions.
De-Assign	-	Unassigns the selected alert or alerts from a user.
Acknowledge	-	Acknowledges the selected alert or alerts and assumes responsibility for it.
De-Acknowledge	-	Unacknowledges the selected alert or alerts to indicate that you are no longer responsible.
Set Severity	Critical Major Minor Warning Indeterminate Clear	Changes the severity of the selected alert or alerts.
Set Significance	Causal Impacting Related Collateral	Sets the relative significance of the selected alert or alerts, initially calculated based on its entropy (a measure of the rarity or uniqueness of this alert) with 'Causal' being the most unique, and 'Collateral' being the least.
Show Details	-	Opens the Alert Details pop-up window with more information about the selected alert(s).
Copy	-	Copies the displayed columns for the selected rows. You can use the copied information to create a comma-separated file.
Selective Copy	Dialog box of displayed columns	Choose Selective Copy from the menu or press <Shift><C> to activate. Select columns from the dialog box and click Ok or press <Enter>. You can then paste the comma-separated data into a file. "C" is the Hotkey set to Copy by default. You can change this in Settings > Hotkeys.
Show Timeline	-	Displays the Timeline view for the selected alert(s) showing you the time extent of the alert, from when it was first created to its last change.
Tools	Server Tools... SSH to Host	Lists the client-side alert tools that you can run. Opens the SSH dialog box so that you can connect to the host using Secure Shell (SSH).
Add to Situation...	-	Opens the Add Alerts to Situation dialog box so that you can add the selected alert(s) to a Situation.
Remove from Situation...	-	Opens the Remove Alerts from Situation dialog box so that you can remove the selected alert(s) from a Situation.
Move to Situation...	-	Opens the Move Alerts dialog box so that you can move the alert(s) to a Situation.
Resolve...	-	Opens the Resolve Alerts dialog box so that you can resolve the selected alert(s). It prompts you to submit an entry to the Journal thread of all Situations that the alert is a member of.
Close...	-	Opens the Close Alerts dialog box. It prompts you to submit an entry to the Journal thread of all Situations that the alert is a member of. Once an alert has been changed to a closed state it cannot be revived.

Add alerts to Situations

You can add a single or multiple alerts to a Situation if you think that they are related or it makes sense to do so. To add one or more alerts to a Situation from the alert filter view such as My Alerts or Open Alerts:

Select the alert or alerts you want to add to a Situation by clicking the checkbox(es) in the far left column.
Right-click on the alerts or click Tools to open the Tools menu and then click Add to Situation.
Use the Filter to find the relevant Situations and select the Situation or Situations to add the alert(s) to.
Click Done.

Alert workflow

Administrators can assign alerts to different Moogsoft Enterprise users, own alerts and add them to Situations.

The standard method of working with alerts is to have an Administrator who assigns alerts to the Users within a team. An alternative is to have a single Administrator who owns Situations and deals with all of their associated alerts. The sections below outline the standard workflow that can be applied to both of these methods.

Assigned alerts

Once an alert has been assigned to you, you either receive a Notification or it appears in your My Alerts filter.

After identifying which alerts have the highest priority, typically the alerts with the highest severity, the next step is to Acknowledge them to let others know that you are aware of them. A standard way of working would be to work through all of the day's 'Critical' alerts and resolve those first before working on the days 'Major' and then 'Warning' alerts to prevent them becoming 'Critical' alerts.

To do this, right click in the alert's row or tag it using the checkbox in the far left column and then click Tools > Acknowledge.

Timeline

To access an alert's timeline, right click on it and select Show Timeline.

The timeline shows a graphical view of an alert and a breakdown of the events that were de-duplicated to create the alert. It also displays the severity of each event and the times at which they occurred.

Click the Zoom In or Zoom Out options to focus in on a particular time period or group of events. Alternatively use the blue sliders to focus in on an area of interest. The severity of each event is indicated by the color of the line. For example, the events in the screenshot above are a mixture of indeterminate and critical Events.

The alert's severity is defined by the severity of the latest event rather than the event with the highest severity.

Click any of the colored lines for more information on any event in the timeline. This opens the Event Details window. The Events Details window allows you to explore the forensic details of an event or events.

The individual column names and their descriptions are listed below:

Name	Description
Agent	The name of the monitor that detected the events. Frequently a sub-category of Manager.
Agent Location	The IP address or co-ordinates of the geographic location where the events were detected.
Alert Id	This is the numeric identifier given to the alert.
Class	The subcategory of the Agent.
Count	The number of times this alert has been counted.
Description	A text summary or description of the alert.
Entropy	The entropy value (between 0 and 1).
Event Id	The ID given to the event.
Event Time	The time of the event.
Event Type	The type of event.
First Event Time	The time of the first event that Moogsoft Enterprise recorded.
Internal Last Event Time	The time that the last event was recorded by MoogDb.
Last Event Time	The time of the last event that was recorded by the Agent. This may be set by the LAM or the Alert Builder. The default is when the LAM first registered the event.
Last State Change	The time of the last event state change.
Manager	The system sending the event.
Owner	The username of the user who owns the alert and its events.
Severity	The severity of the event.
Significance	The significance of the alert.
Source	The name of the source machine.
Source Id	The unique identifier for the source machine.
State	The state of the event.
Type	The alert type. For example DBFail, HTTPDDown, LinkDown.

Collaborate

Go to Collaborate in the Situation Room and share comments or ideas with your colleagues to find a resolution.

Ultimately, the aim is to resolve high severity alerts before you resolve the Situation. If anyone proposes a solution, this can be tested using Tools or going back to the My Alerts view and clicking on the Host column to SSH into it.

Resolving steps

If you or another user finds a solution that fixes the problem, mark the comment as the Resolving Step. To do this, click the check icon next to the post in Comments or under Collaborate:

The comment marked as the Resolving Step is highlighted with a green line. Now that a resolution has been found, you can resolve the Situation.

To do this, click the Resolve button under Status in the Situation Room. The 'Resolve Situation' pop-up window appears:

Screen Shot 2018-07-11 at 3.46.10 PM.png

Add a star rating to indicate the relevance and quality of information given in the Situation along with a journal entry comment. Click Done to continue.

In this section: