Configuring and managing alerts

Configure an Alert

1. On the sidebar, click Settings.

2. Click Alerts -> New Alert.

3. Enter a unique and descriptive name for your alert.

4. Select what you would like to be alerted for; events or event types.

   Events:

   Click Add Events to explicitly opt-in for events to be alerted for. Preconfigured events are available for selection in the Events table and can be filtered by:

   • Type: Built-in or custom events.
   • Incidents & Severity: Incidents, Warning, or Critical.
   • Entity type: Monitored technology currently supported.
   • Free-text filter

   Select all or a subset of events and click Add Events.

   Deleting all events linked to an alert would also delete the alert. This is done to avoid stale alert configurations.

   Event Types:

   

   Select Alert on Event Type(s) and from the list of event types select the types you would like to be alerted for:

   • Incidents.
   • Critical issues.
   • Warning issues.
   • Changes.
   • Online.
   • Offline.

   Any event matching one of the selected types triggers an alert, assuming it matches the configured scope.

5. Select a Scope to filter the events even further.

   To filter for specific events based on application perspectives, select a particular Application by clicking Application Perspectives. For example, to be notified for events of the application App Test, select the application App Test from the list of currently configured applications.

   To filter for specific events based on a Dynamic Focus query, enter a query by clicking Selected Entities Only (Dynamic Focus Query). For example, to be notified of events affecting the prod zone of the monitored system, specify the query entity.zone:prod.

   By selecting All Available Entities all events matching the criteria in section 2 will trigger an alert, regardless of on which entity they are detected. Please be aware that for large systems this option can lead to many alerts being sent out.

   An estimate of the number of events matching the configuration can be found just as follows the drop-down.

6. To add specific alerts channels you to be notified on, click Add Alert Channels. In the Alert Channels table, preconfigured alert channels are available for selection.

   Notifications that match events are pushed to your selected alerting channels.

7. To include an additional payload that is relevant to you in alert notifications for specific alert configuration sent by Instana click on Add Row in the Custom Payloads section.

   For more information, refer to: Configure Custom Payload Globally.

   Both global custom payload and alert-specific custom payload will be included in alert notifications if applicable, but the alert-specific configuration has priority over the global configuration. As a result, in the case of using the same key, the value of the global custom payload field will be overridden by the alert-specific one.

   Unlike global custom payload configuration, Dynamic Custom Payload is not supported in alert-specific configuration.

8. To save the new alert, click Create.

   

   

   

   

   

   

Alert notifications

Each sent alert notification contains additional information about the detected event:

• Event ID
• Event type
• Event status (open, closed)
• Event text and details
• Link to Instana
• Start time
• Severity

If applicable, events are enriched with additional information based on information of the monitored system. While some properties are included by default, Instana users can define custom payload fields to fit their needs.

• Built-in payload: Textual values that are included in all alert notifications when available:
  • Host FDQN and tags
  • Host tags
  • Custom or availability zone
  • Container names
• Custom payload: User defined list of static or dynamic payload attributes to be included in all alerts if applicable. Check out the Custom Payload documentation for more details about how to configure custom payload in alerts.