Alert Delivery Methods

Last modified on March 27, 2024

AlertSite can send alerts to various notification channels. To learn how to add recipients for alerts, see Creating Alert Recipients.

Notification Method Alert Types
Availability Performance
Build-in recipient types
Email (HTML or text) + +
Email to wireless device (cell phone, pager, Blackberry, and so on) + +
Telephone message (VoIP) [1] +  
SMS [2] +  
PagerDuty + +
ServiceNow + +
Splunk + +
Pager: +  

HTTP POST request (webhook):

+ +
SNMP trap +  
Additional alerting integrations
OpsGenie + +
Slack +
VictorOps +

[1] VoIP alerts are not available during trial.

[2] To use SMS alerts, you need to purchase SMS credits. Contact your account manager for assistance.

E-mail (HTML or text)

Email alerts are sent from [email protected]. The default subject line of email alerts looks like this:

[AlertSite] Site/Device Alert (ST=status code) - Monitor_name Error_description

When the error is resolved, the notification subject line looks like this (ST=0 means “no error”):

[AlertSite] Site/Device Alert (ST=0) - Monitor_name

Alert contents can be formatted as HTML or plain text. You can customize alert contents by using alert templates.

E-mail to Wireless Device (Cell Phone, Pager, Blackberry, and so on)

This method sends a text message to a cell phone via that phone’s email address that was provided by the cell phone company. Many cellular carriers in the US, UK and Canada support this method. There are no additional charges from AlertSite for using this method.

Here are examples of cell phone email addresses for different cellular carriers:

AT&T [email protected]
Sprint [email protected]
T-Mobile [email protected]
U.S. Cellular [email protected]
Verizon [email protected]
Examples of paging carriers:
Skytel [email protected]

Email-to-text alerts have the following format by default:

Site Name (Monitor type) [Status code, Description, Timestamp, Location]

For example, an alert for an error found from the Fort Lauderdale location might look like this:

My Monitor Name (Web Site) [1, Error-TCP Connection Failed, 04-15 15:30, Fort Lauderdale]

You can change the alert format by creating custom alert templates.

SMS

AlertSite can send SMS (text messages) to cell phones, PDAs and similar wireless devices. Your mobile provider must support SMS.

Prerequisites
  • To use SMS alerts, you need to purchase SMS credits. Contact your AlertSite account manager or sales representative for details.

  • SMS alerts from private locations require additional configuration. Contact SmartBear Support for assistance.

Usage

When creating an SMS recipient, specify the phone number in the following format:

Region Format Example
United States and Canada 1 area-code number 12125551212
International country-code number (without leading +) 493206922000

SMS alerts have this format:

AlertSite:
Monitor name, status code, Error
description, Location
Timestamp

For example, an alert for an error discovered from the Fort Lauderdale location might look like this:

AlertSite:
My Monitor Name, 9, Ping Failed
Fort Lauderdale
15:30 04/15/14

Telephone message (VoIP)

You can receive alerts as phone calls to a number of your choice. If answered, the call announces alert condition, otherwise a voice message is left. There are no additional charges from AlertSite for using this method, but there may be charges from your telephone service provider.

When configuring a VoIP recipient, enter your phone number in this format:

Region Format Example
United States and Canada 1 area-code number 12125551212
International 011 country-code number (without leading +) 011493206922000

AlertSite VoIP alerts come from the US number 954-800-2545.

PagerDuty

You can integrate AlertSite with PagerDuty to trigger incidents in PagerDuty when an AlertSite monitor detects an error. For details, see PagerDuty Integration.

ServiceNow

Use the ServiceNow integration to automatically create incidents in ServiceNow based on alerts from AlertSite. See ServiceNow Integration.

Splunk

AlertSite can send availability and performance alerts to your Splunk server. For details, see Splunk Integration.

Alphanumeric (Text) Pager

Alerts can be sent to alphanumeric pagers via a special protocol. If you want to use this notification method, please contact SmartBear support.

Alphanumeric pager alerts have this format:

AlertSite:
Monitor name, status code, Error
description, Location
Timestamp

Numeric Pager

Alerts can be sent to numeric pagers. AlertSite supports two methods of alert delivery:

  • Pause after dial – Dials a pager number and waits 10 seconds before delivering the numeric message.

  • Wait for quiet – Waits for a “quiet” period after dialing before sending the numeric message (more reliable than “pause after dial”).

When creating a numeric pager recipient, enter the pager’s phone number in this format:

Region Format Example
United States and Canada 1 area-code number 12125551212
International 011 country-code number (without leading +) 011493206922000
Note: We do not recommend using numeric pagers for alerts. They provide little or no error-detection or recovery capability and are best left for human-only use.
Alert Format

Alerts sent to numeric pagers are a combination of status code, monitor type code, and the last three digits of the IP address of the target site.

The format of numeric pager messages is 777, followed by:

For example, if the alert is triggered for a site with an IP address 216.65.123.194 due to a TCP connection failure (AlertSite status code 01), the numeric pager would receive 7770101194:

Format of numeric pager alerts

When the problem has resolved, the pager would receive 7770001194 (status 00 = no error).

JSON POST Request

Alerts can be sent via an HTTP POST request with JSON payload. JSON payload can be customized as per your requirements. This method can be used to integrate AlertSite with JSON Alerts for details.

POST Request to Web Server

Alerts can be send via HTTP POST request with data in the application/x-www-form-urlencoded format. The request body contains the monitor and error information as field=value pairs:

POST /your/url HTTP/1.1
Host: yourserver.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
User-Agent: ipd/1.0 (ipd; IPD 1.0; AlertSite)
Content-Length: 353
 
source=AlertSite&custid=C12345&company=AlertSite%20Demo&device_id=121352&device_name=Home%20Page&timestamp=2015-09-17%2012:50:03&status=7&errcount=1&status_text=HTTP%20error%20from%20web%20server&location=Fort%20Lauderdale,%20FL&location_num=10&device_typecode=w&device_type=Web%20Server&transaction=0&http_status=HTTP/1.1%20503%20Service%20Unavailable&

Below are the decoded values with line breaks added for readability. For a description of these values, see Alert Data Fields.

source=AlertSite
custid=C12345
company=AlertSite Demo
device_id=121352
device_name=Home Page
timestamp=2015-09-17 12:50:03
status=7
errcount=1
status_text=HTTP error from web server
location=Fort Lauderdale, FL
location_num=10
device_typecode=w
device_type=Web Server
transaction=0
http_status=HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable

SNMP Trap

This method sends an SNMP trap to a specific IP address with a trap listener. For details, see SNMP Alerts.

Note: Because SNMP traps use UDP, they are unreliable across public networks. A more reliable solution is to send alerts via a POST request to your own web server, and then send the trap through your local network. For an example, see Creating an SNMP Trap.

See Also

Performance Alerts
Creating Alert Recipients
Alert Templates

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