Alert Monitor
Alert Monitor provides an interface for viewing, setting and configuring alerts based on events that occur in any or all Softdial Contact Center™ applications.
The monitored events are pre-defined errors or triggers that may be based on performance (e.g. time an agent spends in wrap) or resource monitoring.
A selection of Alert Messages you may see is available - download here .
Running Alert Monitor
Alert Monitor is started on installation and is also a startup item. If the Alert Monitor panel is closed (File/ Exit) it continues to run in the background and will automatically be re-opened when a registered event occurs. It may also be opened by right clicking the system tray icon 
and selecting Show Alert Monitor (Fig. 1).
Alert Monitor may also be downloaded for remote use via the web client Login page. See Accessing Client Applications.
The Alert Monitor window opens (Fig. 2).
This window displays any alerts that meet the criteria defined for the alert (see below).
Adding new/ configuring existing alerts
In the Alert Monitor window, event alerts are added and configured by selecting File > Event Registration....
The Event Registration Details window opens (Fig. 3),
Fig. 3 - Event Registration Details
- To add a new alert (event), click the Add button
- To configure an existing alert, select the event to be changed and click the Edit button
The Event Detail dialogue is displayed (Fig. 4).
Configuring Event Details
The Event Detail dialogue presents the following fields:
Facility
Select the Facility to be monitored (Fig. 5).
Fig. 5 - Event Detail - Facility
If the required facility is not available in the dropdown list, you can enter it manually (e.g. Reporter).
Severity
Select the Severity of event that you want to be alerted (Fig. 6).
Fig. 6 - Event Detail - Severity
The Severity options are:
- Notification - intended for logging / diagnostic trace purposes but not normally viewed.
- Warning - intended to advise potential problems. These may be monitored
- Error - used for any event that may cause a real problem for the user and requires admin or support input.
- Fatal Error - signifies that a subsystem is experiencing a permanent failure that is causing outage for a part of the call center population.
Action Type
The Action Type configuration enables event responses to be scripted in detail (Fig. 7).
Fig. 7 - Event Detail - Action Type
Possible responses are:
- Log - log the event but do not Alert
- Pop Tooltip - pop a tooltip with the event details
- Pop Window - pop the Alert Monitor window
- CallGem Command - send a message to Softdial CallGem™ (e.g. launch a workflow process)
- Shell Command - initiate a Shell Command (e.g. run a batch script file). See Shell Command - more details below
- SNMP event - issue an SNMP event (See
Shell Command - more details
From V10.5 G.A, when selecting to execute a Shell Command, the extra parameter File Name becomes available (Fig. 8).
Fig. 8 - Event Detail - Sendmail Action
This should contain the name of the executable file or batch script to run. This allows the command to be run and its parameters to be specified separately. Fig. 8 shows the configuration required to run a sendmail.cmd script.
See sendmail.cmd example
sendmail.cmd is a simple script that creates a temporary email document and runs the sendmail command line to send an e-mail:
This relies on a third-party sendmail implementation. These are widely available.
@ECHO OFF
SET "TEMPFILE=%RANDOM%.tempmail"
REM send email from command line via SMTP with sendmail
ECHO From: info@sytelco.com > %TEMP%\%TEMPFILE%
ECHO To: support@sytelco.com >> %TEMP%\%TEMPFILE%
ECHO Subject: Softdial Contact Center Alert >> %TEMP%\%TEMPFILE%
ECHO. >> %TEMP%\%TEMPFILE%
ECHO Facility code: %1. >> %TEMP%\%TEMPFILE%
ECHO Severity: %2 >> %TEMP%\%TEMPFILE%
ECHO Time: %3 >> %TEMP%\%TEMPFILE%
ECHO Message: %4 >> %TEMP%\%TEMPFILE%
ECHO. >> %TEMP%\%TEMPFILE%
ECHO Please take action. >> %TEMP%\%TEMPFILE%
C:\Softdial\tools\sendmail.exe -t < %TEMP%\%TEMPFILE%
DEL %TEMP%\%TEMPFILE%
Change the text in bold to the required addresses.
Action parameters
The parameters in the Action Parameters field are passed as command-line parameters.
Some parameters like the message text will have spaces and are best enclosed in quotes for scripts to treat as a single parameter.
Alert Monitor implements some specialised environment variables to enable parameter substitution. These are:
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
| %FACILITY% | The facility code |
| %SEVERITY% | The text of the severity (normal, warning, error, fatal error) |
| %TENANT% | The tenant id to which the alert related |
| %MSG% | The message body |
| %DATE% | The short date of the event (not necessarily the current date) |
| %TIME% | The short time of the event (not necessarily the current time) |
| %DATETIME% | The date and time of the event |
When an event that matches the pattern is received, Alert Monitor executes the command line and passes any substituted parameters. Note that regular environment variables can also be used and these will be passed through for the command shell to substitute.
Alerts are notified to Alert Monitor by the Notify Event [NE] message which has the following parameters: (See also Resource Enumeration - Enumerate Notifications )
- Facility (FA) - The application, resource or performance based events being monitored (See Facility below, with Fig. 5)
- Severity (SE) - The severity of the event (See Severity below, with Fig. 6)
- Tenant (TD) - Alerts may be configured per tenant
- Message (MS) - The message to be displayed in the alert
- Timestamp (TS) - The time the event was processed by Softdial CallGem™
Configuring the time before an alert is raised
The time before which some agent activity alerts are raised is configurable by setting registry key values, which are located as follows:
| Setup type | Location |
|---|---|
| 32 bit server | HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Sytel\Dialer |
| 64 bit server |
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Sytel\Dialer |
| V10.7 | HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Sytel\Dialer |
The following table details configurable agent alerts (all DWORDs).
- On a pre V10.7, 64 bit server, these are stored in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Sytel\Dialer. - For all other setups, these are stored in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Sytel\Dialer.
| Key | Description | Alert Type | Default Value (s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| TalkWarnThreshold | Target Agent Talk Time Exceeded | Warning | 600 |
| TalkErrorThreshold | Maximum Agent Talk Time Exceeded | Error | 1200 |
| WrapWarnThreshold | Target Agent WrapTime Exceeded | Warning | 60 |
| WrapErrorThreshold | Maximum Agent Wrap Time Exceeded | Error | 120 |
SNMP traps
Alert Monitor acts as a limited SNMP agent that generates SNMP traps only.
The OID for traps takes the following form:
.1.3.6.1.4.1.33644.<instancenum>.<sequencenum>.<element>[.0]
33644 is Sytels IANA PEN
where:
- <instancenum> defaults to 1 but can be set by instance of AlertMon
- <sequencenum> is a sequence number starting from 1
- <element> is an element number.
There are 6 element numbers corresponding to the following data:
- Message (MS parameter) as Octet String
- Severity (SE parameter) as Integer32
- Tenant (TD parameter) as Octet String
- Facility Code (FA parameter) as Octet String
- Date and time (TS parameter) as Octet String containing long date and time format.
- The element for the trap itself.
It is possible to set the instance number and the host name and port numbers where the trap will be sent. For example where you have several instances of Alert Monitor running on different hosts, and want to concentrate traps to a single server.
The settings are defined using the following registry settings :
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sytel\AlertMon
| Value | Type | Default |
|---|---|---|
| SNMPHost | REG_SZ | localhost |
| SNMPPort | REG_DWORD | 162 |
| SNMPInstance | REG_DWORD | 1 |
Update to Disk Space Checking (V10.6.128)
From version 10.6.128 it is now possible to view information from the disk checker. Logging now writes:-
- The time the check started
- The current detected size of the checked volume
- The time that the next check is due
- Any exceptions
Previously the default configuration of Alert Monitor did not include disk checker errors from the services listed but only from Softdial Campaign Manager™ (so the disk space alert was only observed in Softdial Campaign Manager™). Now the error event comes through on the Resources Event Monitor so other service alert monitoring no longer needs to be configured.
This is what happens on a per service level:-
- When the service starts up and every 15 minutes thereafter a check is fired and the space on the used logging volume is checked.
- If the volume free space is less than 100 MB, an error is raised on every cycle (every 15 minutes). If there is only 100MB of log space left this will cause unrecoverable errors on the volume therefore the user must be informed regularly.
- If the volume free space is less than 1 GB then every 6 hours an alert will be raised per service.
- All of the above info will also be written to the log files of the service in the case of the C# services.
To see Softdial CallGem™ alerts, you must add the dialer service alert monitor filter.