Creating granular alert notifications - rule by rule, monitor by monitor

re: Creating granular alert notifications - rule by rule, monitor by monitor

Marnix Wolf — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:58:32 GMT

Hi Kevin.

Nice article.

But why has Microsoft made alerting so difficult? I mean the UI should cover all this, without the need for any scripts. It should make SCOM more userfriendly and for more better to control alert notifications.

It gives me the feeling like buying a car but when one wants to use the horn one has to pull/push a huge number of handles/buttons to get it working.

Example: At a customers site there are four SCOM Management Groups in place. For one Management Group (the main one) there are 3 different departments (with every department having its own sub-departments) who need to receive alerts concerning their field of work/operations.

In MOM2005 it was an pretty staightforward job to get things working. But with SCOM 2007 I have to dig deep to get things partially working. Secondly, this customer refuses to get down to programming since they want a SCOM environment which can be easily operated by their own people without having to depend on third party involvement just to get a simple alert forwarded to a sms enabled device. More over, their departments are flexible, so the alert notifications have to be as well. How can it be flexible when for every change a PS script has to be adjusted?

Don't get me wrong, I do not personally blame you but I don't see the above script being a real solution. At its best it is a workaround for a part of SCOM which really needs to get more attention in such a way that it becomes what it should be: an easy to operate interface for alert notifications without all the hassles of using PS.

When I look at the Connect site I notice there are many more people in the field experiencing the same problems. I do hope Microsoft will improve this since SCOM is a great product but with the way alert notifications is arranged now, it will downplay the overall rating of SCOM. And that would be a shame.

Kind regards,

Marnix Wolf

re: Marnix

kevinhol — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 21:20:22 GMT

Marnix - that is excellent feedback.... and you are preaching to the choir here... as you suspected.

However - great feedback like this does have its place - and that is leaving it on https://connect.microsoft.com/OpsMgrFeedback/Feedback

That goes directly to the product team.... as you said - when enough feedback like that is received, it is the best catalyst for us to enhance a product direction, or focus on a specific area.

Dont think your feedback goes unread - it matters!

https://connect.microsoft.com/OpsMgrFeedback/Feedback

re: Creating granular alert notifications - rule by rule, monitor by monitor

Marnix Wolf — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:26:01 GMT

Hi Kevin.

It has been posted on the Connect site. I hope this will get any attention.

Kind regards,

Marnix

ps: have you already read my mail concerning the Agentversions? You asked me to mail you but until now the radio has been silent.

re: Creating granular alert notifications - rule by rule, monitor by monitor

Zabber — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 01:04:26 GMT

Kevin, how does the Alert data get into dbo.alert table? Via the MonitoringAlert Class?

Bryan

Using OpsMgr Notifications in the real world - Part 1

Kevin Holman's OpsMgr Blog — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:20:56 GMT

Using notifications such as email, has proven to be somewhat difficult in OpsMgr .  I get questions

re: Creating granular alert notifications - rule by rule, monitor by monitor

kramnavi — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:16:00 GMT

I had a couple of items:

The power shell example link doesnt go to the example. It just goes to the homepage for the code4ward software.

http://code4ward.net/cs2/blogs/code4ward/archive/2007/09/19/set-notificationforalert.aspx

The other thing I was confused about was where are you seeing the xml for the subscription? I have created a monitor\group and put that in a MP. Then I created a subscription and referenced that group.

When I export the MP I do not see any of the fields you are refering to.

Please let me know.

Thanks,

Steve

re: Creating granular alert notifications - rule by rule, monitor by monitor

kevinhol — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:32:17 GMT

Sorry - I cant control that other website's expired links. :-)

As to the question of where is the XML?

"First things first.... let's talk about what happens when you create a normal subscription in the UI: When you run the New Subscription wizard in the UI, you are selecting from what was determined to be the most typical choices for subscribing to alerts for a notification. What this does, behind the scenes, is create some XML, and writes that information to the "Notifications Internal Library" management pack (Microsoft.SystemCenter.Notifications.Internal)"

re: Creating granular alert notifications - rule by rule, monitor by monitor

Marnix Wolf — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:44:31 GMT

The new url to the codesample form Code4ward is: http://code4ward.net/main/Blog/tabid/70/EntryId/12/Set-NotificationForAlert.aspx

re: Creating granular alert notifications - rule by rule, monitor by monitor

Sharkrit — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:37:11 GMT

There are many useful information stored in databases, but we cannot use them from UI or another simple way.

What I need in notifications feilds are very common details,

a.System Hostname (not FQDN or Distinguished Name or Entity Path)

b.Custom Group Name which created in Authoring

c.Server Owner or Group Owner name. (not Alert Owner)

Do you have any solution to add this data to e-mail notifications?

re: Adding NetBIOS name, Custom Group, and Server Owner to an alert

kevinhol — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:54:18 GMT

You bring up a couple good points, and I hear this a lot.

Unfortunately - there is no easy way to do this. This was fairly easy to acheive in MOM 2005, using custom fields. However, since OpsMgr MP's are sealed, and custom fields are not available via override, there is no easy way to use them with a sealed MP.

The best way to acheive this in SCOM, is to write a custom product connector, using the SDK, that will poll the alerts every so often, and inspect for the alerts you care about. Then - using the SDK, modify the fields of the alerts using custom fields. This includes writing a connector that will traverse the class relationships - and roll up to the Windows Computer object - to try and get the NetBIOS name of the computer in the custom field.

If you have programming skills, this is no problem. If you dont... then this will be a potential hole in your deployment. My recommendation is to open a case with Microsoft, and request this functionality from the product. That is the best way to provide the necessary feedback that you need this in the product.

Please send me an email if you'd like to discuss this further.

re: Creating granular alert notifications - rule by rule, monitor by monitor

John Curtiss — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:09:16 GMT

is this link https://connect.microsoft.com/OpsMgrFeedback/Feedback supposed to be dead? is there an updated feedback link?

re: Creating granular alert notifications - rule by rule, monitor by monitor

Dominique — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:26:49 GMT

Hello,

Are you telling me I need to write script(s) to get a notification about alerts in Operation Manager 2007 R2?

If not please could you post the URL for a simple notification without script.

Thanks,

- DOm

re: write a script??

kevinhol — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:35:23 GMT

No - that isnt what I am saying at all.

In R2 - this is built in to the UI. Only in SP1 this was not built in.... to subcribe to a SINGLE alert.

In R2 this is a simple wizard in the UI.