PRTG Manual: Account Settings—Notifications

To open the account settings of the currently logged in user, select Setup | Account Settings from main menu. Click on the tabs to change the different settings.

Account Settings Tabs

Account Settings Tabs

You can define the following aspects of your account settings:

In the notifications settings you can define and change notifications for the currently logged in PRTG user. They can be triggered for certain sensor states and data.

Notification Settings

Notification Settings

Note

This section describes one of three steps to set up the notification system in PRTG. A complete notification setup involves:

  1. Check and set up the Notification Delivery settings. This will tell PRTG how to send messages.
    For detailed information, see System Administration—Notification Delivery.
  2. Check and set up several Notifications. This will define the kind of message and its content.
    For detailed information, see Account Settings—Notifications.
  3. Check and set up Notification Triggers for objects. These will provoke the defined notifications.
    For detailed information, see Sensor Notifications Settings.

For background information, please see Notifications section.

Notifications Overview

Click on the Notifications tab to show a list of all existing notifications. Using the links next to the notification name, you can perform the following actions:

  • Delete: Delete this notification (not possible for predefined notifications)
  • Test: Trigger this notification immediately for testing purposes. Note: When using placeholders, they will not be resolved in a test notification, but the variables will be sent instead.
  • Pause: Pause this notification. If a notification is paused, no messages will be sent when it is triggered.
  • Clone: Create an exact copy of this notification. It will be added to the notifications list as Clone of ...
  • Used by: Show a list of objects using this notification.

Please see also Working with Table Lists. Additionally, there is multi-edit available. This enables you to change properties of several objects at a time. For more details, please see Multi-Edit Lists section.

Notifications Settings

Click on the Add new notification button to add a new notification, or click on the name of an existing notification to edit it.

Note: This documentation refers to the PRTG System Administrator user accessing the Ajax interface on a master node. For other user accounts, interfaces, or nodes, not all of the options might be available as described. When using a cluster installation, failover nodes are read-only by default.

Basic Notification Settings

Notification Name

Enter a meaningful name for the notification, for example, SMS to service team or similar.

Status

Select the status of the notification. Choose between:

  • Started: This notification will be active.
  • Paused: Pause this notification. If a notification is paused, no messages will be sent when it is triggered.

Schedule

Define when this notification will be active. Please select None to set it to always active, or choose a schedule from the list. Usually schedules define when this notification will be active; schedules defined as period list set this notification to inactive at the corresponding time spans. The available options depend on your setup. To add or change existing schedules, please see Account Settings—Schedules section.

Postpone

Define if notifications triggered during Pause status will be sent later on.

  • No: Discard all notification triggers received while the notification is paused.
  • Yes: Collect all notification triggers received while the notification is paused. Send out notifications once the pause status ends.

Notification Summarization

Method

Define if and how notifications will be summarized if several notification triggers are received in a certain time span. Note: Regardless of the option chosen here, notifications of Execute HTTP Action and Execute Program are always sent ASAP; they are never summarized. Choose between:

  • Always notify ASAP: Always send out one notification for each notification trigger received.
  • Send first DOWN message ASAP, summarize others: When receiving several Down triggers, send the first notification immediately, but summarize other notifications into one message.
  • Send first DOWN and UP message ASAP, summarize others: When receiving several Down or Up triggers, send each first notification immediately, but summarize other notifications into one message.
  • Send all DOWN messages ASAP, summarize others: When receiving several Down triggers, send out one notification for each trigger received, but summarize notifications for all other triggers into one message.
  • Send all DOWN and UP messages ASAP, summarize others: When receiving several Down or Up triggers, send out one notification for each trigger received, but summarize notifications for all other triggers into one message.
  • Always summarize notifications: When receiving several notification triggers, summarize all notifications into one message, regardless of the kind of trigger received.

Subject for Summarized Messages

Define a subject which will be used when sending summarized notifications. You can use the placeholder %SUMMARYCOUNT for the number of messages which are summarized. Note: The subject you define is only used for Send Email and Amazon Simple Notification Service Message notifications.

Gather Notifications For (Minutes)

Define a time span in minutes for which notifications will be collected for summarization. Please enter an integer value. Note: If you define a high value, for example, 60 minutes, PRTG will send out summarized notifications with a delay of up to one hour.

Access Rights

User Group Access

Define which user group(s) will have access to the object you're editing. A table with user groups and right is shown; it contains all user groups from your setup. For each user group you can choose from the following access rights:

  • Inherited: Use the settings of the parent object.
  • None: Users in this group cannot see or edit the object. The object does not show up in lists.
  • Read: Users in this group can see the object and review its settings.
  • Write: Users in this group can see the object, as well as review and edit its settings. However, they cannot edit access rights settings.
  • Full: Users in this group can see the object, as well as review and edit its settings and edit access rights settings.

You can create new user groups in the System Administration—User Groups settings.

Notifications Settings—Choose Notification Methods

With the following settings, you can add one or more methods by which a notification message will be sent out. From the list you can only choose one method or combine several methods. Whenever the notification is triggered, it will send out messages or perform actions for all configured methods at a time.

To choose a method, add a check mark symbol in front of the respective setting name. You will then see the options as described below.

Note: In your message, you can use various placeholders. Some are already filled in by default. For a complete list of available placeholders, please see the More section below.

Send Email

Note: The email header and footer can be set in the System Administration—Notification Delivery settings.

Email Address

Enter one or more recipient email addresses. If entering more addresses, separate them by comma. If you want to send to a PRTG user group only, leave this field empty!

Send to User Group

From the drop down list, please choose a user group to send an email with the report to all members of this group (you can edit user groups under System Administration—User Groups). Select None to not use this feature.

Note: If you define individual email addresses (see field above) and a user group, the message will be sent to the individual email addresses as well as to the members of the selected user group. In both cases, PRTG will send one message with all recipients in the "To" field of the email.

Subject

Enter the subject of the email. Several placeholders (variables) are used here by default.

Format

Define the kind of email that will be sent. Choose between:

  • Text
  • HTML

Message

Depending on the format option selected above, you will see a text or HTML message in this field. A complete message about the sensor status is already predefined. You can change it to your liking. To reset this field to its default value, enter a single star symbol * (and nothing else). Click on the Reset to default link underneath the text box to do so.

Priority

Define the priority which will be set in the email. Some email clients can show this flag.

Add Entry to Event Log

Logfile

Define the log file the message will be written to. Choose between:

  • Application: Use the Windows application log file in the event log.
  • PRTG Network Monitor: Write messages to the PRTG Network Monitor log file in the Windows event log.

Event Source

This setting is only relevant when using the Application log file. Enter the source for the event. Usually, this is the name of the application.

Event Type

Select the type of the event. Choose between:

  • Error
  • Warning
  • Information

Event Log Message

Define the message. A message with information about the sensor status is already predefined. Several placeholders (variables) are used here. You can change it to your liking. To reset this field to its default value, enter a single star symbol * (and nothing else).

Send Syslog Message

Host/IP

Define the IP address or DNS name of the computer running the syslog server.

Port

Enter the port number on which syslog messages are sent. By default, this is port number 514. Note: Only User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is supported.

Facility

Define the facility information. There are several options available from the list.

Message

Define the message. A message with information about the sensor status is already predefined. Several placeholders (variables) are used here. You can change it to your liking. To reset this field to its default value, enter a single star symbol * (and nothing else).

Send Syslog Message—Syslog Message Severity Status

Depending on the status of the sensor triggering the syslog notification the Severity level of the message will be set automatically:

led_green_big OK

Severity level: Notice (5)

led_yellow_big Warning

Severity level: Warning (4)

led_red_big Error

Severity level: Error (3)

Send SNMP Trap

For information about the OIDs used in the contents of the traps sent by PRTG, please see the SNMP Trap documentation in the More section below.

Host/IP

Define the IP address or DNS name of the computer running the trap receiver.

SNMP Port

Enter the port number on which trap messages are sent. By default, this is port number 162.

Community String

Enter the device's community string. By default, this is set to public. Please enter a string or leave the field empty.

Specific Trap Code

Enter a code that can help you identify the purpose of the trap. Default value is 0. Please enter an integer value.

Message ID

This ID helps you identify the origin of the trap. For example, enter 1.3.6.1.4.1.32446.1.1.1

Message

Define the message. A message with information about the sensor status is already predefined. Several placeholders (variables) are used here. You can change it to your liking. To reset this field to its default value, enter a single star symbol * (and nothing else).

Agent IP

Define the IP address of the agent. Leave this field blank to use the PRTG web server's IP address.

Send SMS/Pager Message

Note: This notification method needs to be set up in the System Administration—Notification Delivery settings first.

Note: This notification method will use the central proxy settings defined for your PRTG core server. For details, please see System Administration—Core & Probes (section Proxy Configuration).

Recipient Number

Define the number the message will be sent to. The format depends on the SMS provider. Usually, you will use a plus sign, followed by country code and number. For example, enter +1555012345.

Message

Define the message. A message with information about the sensor status is already predefined. Several placeholders (variables) are used here. You can change it to your liking. To reset this field to its default value, enter a single star symbol * (and nothing else).

Execute HTTP Action

Note: Regardless of the Notification Summarization method chosen above, notifications of Execute HTTP Action are always sent as soon as possible (ASAP); they are never summarized.

Note: This notification method will use the central proxy settings defined for your PRTG core server. For details, please see System Administration—Core & Probes (section Proxy Configuration).

URL

Enter the URL the request will be sent to.

Postdata

If you want to send postdata to the URL, please enter it here. You can use placeholders here. Line breaks are supported.

Execute Program

Note: Regardless of the Notification Summarization method chosen above, notifications of Execute Program are always sent as soon as possible (ASAP); they are never summarized.

Program file

Select an executable file from the list. It will be run every time the notification is triggered. In this list, files in the corresponding /Notifications/EXE sub-directory of the probe system's PRTG installation are shown. In order for the files to appear in this list, please store them as BAT, CMD, DLL, EXE, PS1, or VBS. In order to find the corresponding path, please see Data Storage section. Note: In a cluster setup, please copy your files to every cluster node installation manually. This makes sure the notification can be executed even when the master node fails. If your custom notification executes an external program, this has to be installed on all cluster nodes as well. Please see also Application Programming Interface (API) Definition for detailed information.

Parameter

Enter parameters with which the program file will be started. You can use placeholders here. For example, when using a batch file containing a %1 variable, you can provide a value for this variable here.

Send Amazon Simple Notification Service Message

AWS Access Key ID

Enter your access key as shown in your login area at aws.amazon.com. Please enter a string.

AWS Secret Access Key

Enter your secret access key as shown in your login area at aws.amazon.com. Please enter a string.

Location

Define the location of your Amazon service. Choose between:

  • US-East
  • US-West
  • EU-West

ARN

Enter the Amazon resource name. Please enter a string.

Subject

Enter the subject of the message.

Message

Define the message. A message with information about the sensor status is already predefined. Several placeholders (variables) are used here. You can change it to your liking. To reset this field to its default value, enter a single star symbol * (and nothing else).

Assign Ticket

Note: Regardless of the Notification Summarization method chosen above, notifications of Assign Ticket are always sent as soon as possible (ASAP); they are never summarized.

For details about the ticket system, please see section Tickets.

Assign to User or User Group

Specify whether to assign the notification ticket to a user group or to a single user. Choose between:

  • To User Group: Define the user group which will get this ticket below.
  • To User: Define the dedicated user who will get this ticket below.

Assign Ticket to this User Group / User

Select the user group resp. user to which the notification ticket will be assigned to from the drop down menu.

Subject

Enter the subject of the ticket. Several placeholders (variables) are used here by default. You can change it to your liking.

Content

Define the message in the ticket. A message with information about the sensor status is already predefined. Several placeholders (variables) are used here. You can change it to your liking.

Close Ticket when Condition Clears

Specify if you want to have the ticket automatically closed when the defined trigger condition clears. Choose between:

  • Yes: The ticket will be closed automatically.
  • No: The ticket will remain open after the condition has cleared.

Click on the Save button to store your settings. If you change tabs or use the main menu, all changes to the settings will be lost!

Others

For information about the comments and history tabs, please see Object Settings section.

More

Knowledge Base: What placeholders can I use with PRTG?

Knowledge Base: Documentation of SNMP Traps Sent by PRTG

Knowledge Base: How can PRTG send instant messages to Jabber, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, etc., using external software?

Knowledge Base: Which audible notifications are available in PRTG 9? Can I change the default sound?

 

 

Setup—Topics

Others

There are some settings that have to be made in the System Administration Tools, available as native Windows applications. For more details, please see sections:

Continue

Keywords: Configure,Configure Notification,Notification