GroundWork alert notifications can be configured using Nagios or NoMa. The Nagios method will only notify on Nagios configured elements, and NoMa will notify on both Nagios and other configured monitors (e.g., Cloud Hub, GDMA). Please see Notifications and Downtime for a descriptive overview of these methods.

Configuring notifications using NoMa

NoMa notification rules essentially define the who, what, where, when, why, and how of alert notifications.

Rules contain various directives including contacts and contact groups defining who is to receive notifications, what monitored hosts and services should be included or excluded in the notifying, where and when notifications should be sent, which event states to notify upon, and how the notification will be distributed. Notification rules can be enabled (activated) and disabled, and rules can be set to escalate after a specified number of notifications is reached. The image below illustrates the notification rule (first tab), and points out where the components are defined (other tabs) and where they are incorporated within a rule.

Creating a notification rule

1. Go to Configuration > Notifications.
2. Within the Notifications tab, click Create.
   
   
3. Enter the notification rule directives, starting with the top section Notification Information:
   • Name - Enter a name to identify the notification.
   • Description - (optional) This field describes the notification.
   • Activated - If this directive is checked, the notification rule is enabled (activated).
   • Owner - This directive identifies the owner of a rule for editing,  an administrator can edit all rules.
     
     
4. In the next section Hosts and Services, you'll need to indicate which hosts, host groups, services, service groups are to be included or excluded in the notifications.
   
   • Includes - An applied include constraint will only allow the notification rule to pass if the host or service belongs to at least one of the listed hostgroups or servicegroups. 
   • Excludes - Conversely, an applied exclude constraint will only allow the notification rule to pass if the host or service does not belong to any of the listed hostgroups or servicegroups.
     

     

     Tips

     • The " * " wildcard character indicates "all" possibilities, (e.g., all hosts). Any include fields that are empty are assigned an implicit " * " and will automatically match all possibilities.
     • In specifying comma-separated lists of hosts, hostgroups, services, or servicegroups for inclusion or exclusion filtering, '*' can be used as a multi-character wildcard and '?' can be used as a single-character wildcard, within any particular item in such a list.
     • For the Hosts and Services fields, typing a host name and pressing Tab will display a list of valid hosts and services.
     • The Recipients field is unimplemented and should not be used.
5.  Continuing with the notification rule, the Contacts and methods to notify section is used to define who is to receive notifications (Contacts, Contact Groups), how the notification will be distributed (Methods), and the when the notifications should be sent (Timezone and Timeframe).

   
   

   Tips

   • When selecting elements in each of the Contacts, Groups, and Methods, it is only associated with the present notification rule if its background is grayed indicating it has been selected. To select a single element click on the element, to select more than one element use the Control, Command, or Shift keys while making a selection.
   • Contacts and Groups are defined in their respective tabs and applied in the Notifications tab. Holidays are applied in the Contacts tab, and indicate a period of time a contact should not receive notifications. The Holiday option is only displayed for previously defined contacts. 
   • Method options are defined in the Methods tab and applied in the Notifications tab:
     • E-Mail: Emails are sent using the standard system mailer, you may need to configure your mail relay to accept mail from the system.
       (Command: sendemail, Contact: email, Sender: root@localhost, Fallback method: none, Acknowledgeable: No)
       For information on sending email notifications to modern email services such as Gmail or Office 365 using sendEmail as a TLS-compliant client, see How to enable sendEmail with TLS with NoMa.
     • Growl: Growl notifications are sent using an included script, it requires the Perl module Net::Growl and it uses UDP 9887 by default. After install, allow notifications from network, optionally require password from LAN, the server only requires Perl module Net::Growl as stated earlier. Client, depending on OS, requires an extra client: Mac: http://growl.info Linux: http://mattn.github.com/growl-for-linux/ Windows:http://www.growlforwindows.com/gfw
       (Command: growl, Contact: growladdress, Sender: none, Fallback method: none, Acknowledgeable: No)
     • SMS: SMS alerts are sent via an attached SMS-capable modem using smstool3 or an iSMS/SMSFinder hardware device.
       (Command: sendsms, Contact: mobile, Sender: none, Fallback method: none, Acknowledgeable: No)
     • Voice: Voice alerts are generated with an Asterisk (or Starface) soft PBX.
       (Command: voicecall, Contact: phone, Sender: none, Fallback method: none, Acknowledgeable: Yes)
     • Voice + E-Mail fallback: Voice alert with email method fallback.
       (Command: voicecall, Contact: phone, Sender: none, Fallback method: E-Mail, Acknowledgeable: Yes)
     • Voice + SMS fallback: Voice alert with SMS method fallback.
       (Command: voicecall, Contact: phone, Sender: none, Fallback method: SMS, Acknowledgeable: Yes)
     • For all method options; the Fallback method field is used if the first method returns an error, and is currently only used by the voicecall plugin, to provide fallback to SMS or Email. And, any method that is configured as Acknowledgeable will cause the escalation chain to end, typically only voice should use this method as E-Mail and SMS provide no guarantee that a message has been received and understood.
   • The Timeframe directive indicated the hours allowed for notifications to be sent. Timeframes are defined in the Timeframes tab and applied in the Contacts, Holidays, Contactgroups and Notifications tabs.
6. Next is the section Which events to notify. Here you need to select (check or uncheck) the filter options for recovery, problem, state transitions, and other states of change for which to send notifications.

7. For Numbers and more, set the notify after number to indicate when notifications should start being sent, (e.g., 1 sends a first notification, 2-6 sends second through sixth notifications).

   Tips

   • If the box for Rollover if the last rule is reached is checked, NoMa will start notifications again from number 1 after the last notification (or escalation) has been reached.
   • If the box for Let notifier handle escalations is checked, NoMa is enabled to simulate the reception of notifications from Nagios, this is useful for one-off alerts.
8. Select Create.

9. If you wish to continue notifications after the specified notify after directive, you can add escalations.

   Tips

   • The escalation option is only displayed for previously defined notification rules, so the notification rule would need to be saved first.
   • If you need to delete a contact group and it is associated with an escalation, you need to first delete the escalation, then delete the contact group. If you deleted a contact group that is associated with an escalation, this will cause a crash of the NoMa daemon and an error in the debug log.
   • Go to Configuration > Notifications and select the pencil icon corresponding to the rule to update.
   • Then, select add Escalation toward the bottom of the screen, and set the Contacts and or Groups to be notified, and the Methods of communication for the escalation.
   • As in the first notification, in an escalation the Notify after number indicates when this notification should be escalated.
   • Click Create, adding additional escalations or click Save again to save the notification rule.

Related articles

• Page:
  How to use Nagios to send notifications to NoMa (Knowledge Base)
• Page:
  How to enable sendEmail with TLS with NoMa (Knowledge Base)
• Page:
  How to use includes excludes in NoMa (Knowledge Base)
• Page:
  How to schedule downtime (Knowledge Base)
• Page:
  Nagios Notifications (GroundWork Support 8)
• Page:
  Home Dashboard (GroundWork Support 8)
• Page:
  GroundWork Messenger (GroundWork Support 8)