Creating and editing alerts¶
An alert watches one channel and notifies a schedule group when something is wrong. This page walks through the alert editor field by field, then covers escalation, bit-packed channels, and turning alerts off.
Before you start
- You need a role assigned to Add/Edit Alert Contacts (under Control Panel → Roles) to create or edit alerts. Without it the New alert and Edit buttons are hidden. See Roles and permissions.
- Set up at least one schedule group, or have some alert contacts ready to pick individually.
Open the alert editor¶
- Click Alerts in the top menu. The Alerts tab lists every alert on the account. To see just one location's alerts, open the location and click its Alerts tab instead.
- Click New alert to create one, or click Edit on an alert's row (or double-click the row) to change it.
The grid can be sorted and filtered on any column, and the search box finds an alert by name, device or message.
The mobile app has its own, older alert editor. It still uses a checklist of contacts and Send Alert Via: Text/Email, and does not show schedule groups or text delivery options. Create and edit alerts in the web portal when you want to use schedule groups. See Alerts in the mobile app.
The alert editor, field by field¶
The dialog is titled New Alert or Edit Alert and has four sections.
Watch: what the alert looks at¶
| Field | What to choose |
|---|---|
| Location | The location of the device. Locked when you opened the editor from a location's Alerts tab |
| Device | The device to watch. Gateways are listed with "(gateway)" after the name |
| Channel | The channel on that device |
You can change the device or channel of an existing alert; its history stays with the alert.
Alert: the rule¶
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Name | A descriptive name. It appears in the email subject, in the grids and in history ("Walk-in freezer too warm") |
| Active | On to arm the alert now, Off to save it without notifying anyone |
| Trigger when | Value crosses a threshold, Input changes state (digital channels only), or Device stops reporting |
Value crosses a threshold shows:
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Condition | Above or Below |
| Threshold | The limit, in the channel's units (shown next to the label). Temperatures are in the unit you chose in your settings, °F or °C; Whisker.io converts for you |
| Hysteresis | How far back across the threshold the value must come before the alert clears. Zero or more, in the same units. See Hysteresis |
| Fire | Immediately, or Only if it stays there for a number of minutes (at least 1). See The delay |
Input changes state (digital channels) shows:
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Alert when the input goes | High (on / closed) or Low (off / open) |
| Fire | As above |
Device stops reporting shows:
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| No readings for | Minutes without a reading before the alert fires. At least 30; new alerts start at 120. The alert clears when the device reports again |
Notify: who hears about it¶
| Field | What to choose |
|---|---|
| Who (select group) | A schedule group, or Pick contacts individually…. New alerts start on the group most of your alerts use |
| Text delivery options | Shown when you pick a group. See below |
When you pick a group, the line underneath tells you Right now this would notify whom, and which schedule is active. Click Manage schedules to open the Alert Schedules tab.
Text delivery options decide how texts go out for this alert:
| Option | What happens | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Text everyone on the schedule at once | Everyone on call is texted together. Nobody needs to reply | Information everyone should see |
| Text one person at a time until someone acknowledges | The first person is texted with a code to reply with. If nobody replies within the group's wait time, the next person is texted, and so on | Alarms that need one person to take ownership |
Email always goes to everyone on the schedule at once, whichever option you pick, and voice calls are always one at a time. The details are in Texts, emails and calls.
Pick contacts individually… shows a Contacts checklist and Send by (Text, Email or both). Everyone you check is notified at once by the methods you pick.
Picking contacts individually
Behind the scenes Whisker.io keeps these alerts on an automatic schedule group named after the contacts (for example "Bob Smith, Sue Jones"), marked auto on the Alert Schedules tab. When you reopen the alert, that group is shown in Who (select group). Alerts from before schedule groups were introduced were moved to automatic groups the same way, and behave exactly as they did before.
Message: what it says¶
Type the text that goes out in the text, email or call. Type % to insert a placeholder:
| Placeholder | Replaced with |
|---|---|
%val% |
The value that tripped the alert, with units. Temperatures show both, for example 41.20ºF/5.11ºC |
%devname% |
The device name |
%channame% |
The channel name |
%locname% |
The location name |
%timestamp% |
The time of the reading, in the device's local time |
If your message does not include %locname%, Whisker.io puts the location name in front, for
example "Store 12: Freezer too warm, 41.20ºF/5.11ºC".
Tip
Put the severity and the delay in the message: "Freezer above 10F for more than 15 minutes: %val%" tells the person both how serious it is and how long it has been going on, without logging in.
Advanced: Bitmask¶
The Advanced link appears for digital channels and for any alert that already has a bitmask set. See Bit-packed channels.
Save¶
Click Save. The editor tells you what is missing if it cannot save: a device and channel, a name, the threshold, a hysteresis of zero or more, the delay minutes, an inactivity period of at least 30 minutes, at least one contact and one method when picking contacts individually, or the message.
Turning an alert off¶
Open the alert and set Active to Off. The alert stays on the list (with a dash in the Active column) and keeps its history, but notifies nobody until you turn it back On.
Alerts cannot be deleted from the alert editor. Turn old alerts off rather than renaming and reusing them: the name and history belong together, and reusing an alert rewrites the context of its past occurrences.
Escalation: stacking alerts with different delays¶
Two ways to make sure an alarm reaches someone:
- Within one alert: use Text one person at a time until someone acknowledges. The alarm moves down the schedule's list, and round again, until someone acknowledges it. See Schedule groups.
- Across alerts: put several alerts on the same channel with different delays and different schedule groups. Each alert times the problem independently, so a problem nobody fixes climbs the ladder by itself.
Example: high tower level with management escalation
| Alert | Trigger | Delay | Schedule group |
|---|---|---|---|
| "High tower level" | Above 80 | 15 min | Operators on call |
| "High tower level: ESCALATION" | Above 80 | 120 min | Plant management |
The level goes above 80 and stays there. At 15 minutes the first alert fires and notifies the operators. If the level is still above 80 two hours after it started, the second alert fires on its own and notifies management.
Tiers can also differ by threshold, not just delay. A cooler might carry three alerts:
| Tier | Threshold | Delay | Audience |
|---|---|---|---|
| Food safety alert | Above 40 °F | 90 min | Store staff |
| Maintenance alert | Above 55 °F | 30 min | Maintenance |
| Emergency alert | Above 65 °F | 10 min | Management |
A slow drift trips the food-safety tier; a catastrophic failure jumps straight to the emergency tier. There is no limit on tiers.
Note
Acknowledging one alert does not silence the others on the same channel. Each alert is its own alarm, which is what makes the escalation work.
Bit-packed channels: the Bitmask field¶
Some Modbus registers pack up to 16 separate on/off states into one number. Bitmask tells the alert which bits of that register to look at: the reading is masked before the trigger is tested.
- The default, 65535, means "all 16 bits", the whole value. It is right for every normal channel; leave it alone.
- To watch a single bit, enter its value: 1 for bit 0, 2 for bit 1, 4 for bit 2, 8 for bit 3, and so on.
The Channel Alerts dialog¶
You may also meet the older Channel Alerts dialog, opened from a channel on a device panel or an HMI widget. It lists the channel's alerts with the buttons Create New Alert and Edit Selected Alert. Its alert dialog has the same choices as the editor above, laid out differently: Notify: (a schedule group or Pick contacts individually…), Text delivery: (Everyone on the schedule at once or One person at a time until someone acknowledges), Trigger: OnThreshold, OnInactivity, OnHigh or OnLow, and Value: Greater than... or Less than....