PRTG Manual: Notifications Based on Libraries Step by Step

This documentation refers to an administrator that accesses the PRTG web interface on a master node. Other user accounts, interfaces, or failover nodes might not have all of the options in the way described here. In a cluster, note that failover nodes are read-only by default.

This section gives you an example of how you can reorganize the objects from your device tree in a library to create a customized view of your CPU sensors. This way, you can monitor an entire section of your network with a single set of notifications.

Take the following steps to set up notifications based on libraries:

• Step 1: Add a New Library
• Step 2: Add Sensors to the Library
• Step 3: Define Notification Triggers
• Step 4: Test the Notification
• Step 5: Troubleshooting

Step 1: Add a New Library

First, create a new library:

1. Hover over Libraries in the main menu bar and select Add Library.
2. Give the library a meaningful name, for example CPU Load Custom, and define a security context for it. You can also add some tags for organizational purposes.
3. Optionally, assign access rights to your predefined user groups to grant or restrict permissions to view the library.
4. Click Create to create the new library. The Management tab of the library opens.

For more information, see section Libraries and Node Settings.

Step 2: Add Sensors to the Library

The new library is empty in the beginning, so to add your CPU sensors to it, you need to take the following steps:

1. Click Add Library Node in the lower-left corner.
2. Give the library node a meaningful name, for example CPU sensors, and define a security context for it. You can also add some tags for organization purposes.
3. Select a linked object from your device tree that the library node references. The default object is the root group.
4. For the Library Node View setting, select Show a collection of filtered sensors.
5. To filter the sensors further, select Show only sensors with specific tags under Filter by Tag.
6. Enter one or more tags, for example cpu, to include your CPU sensors in the library node.
   Libraries are dynamic. When you add or remove sensors from your device tree that have the tag that you specified, the library automatically updates the displayed sensors.
    

7. You can also manually add sensors to the library via drag-and-drop.
    

For more information, see section Libraries and Node Settings.

Step 3: Define Notification Triggers

Add a state trigger to your library so that you are notified when a CPU has been running at more than 90% load for more than 5 minutes.

1. Click the Notification Triggers tab (1).
2. Hover over and select Add State Trigger (2).
3. Enter the notification triggers settings (3). These include initial parameters like the sensor status and the duration of the sensor status that triggers the notification, escalation parameters if the sensor status persists, and an action for when the trigger parameters no longer apply.
4. Click to save the notification trigger (4).

You can set up multiple triggers of the same type so that you can define increasingly serious notifications that also use different notification methods. For system-critical network components, we recommend that you always define two different notification triggers with two different notification methods, for example, an email and an SMS.

For more information, see sections Notification Triggers Settings and Notification Templates.

Step 4: Test the Notification

To make sure that your notification setup works as intended, you can trigger test notifications:

1. Go to Setup | Account Settings | Notification Templates.
2. Enable the check box next to a notification and click , or click next to the notification status.
3. Check if the test email and/or SMS have arrived.

In test notification messages, PRTG does not resolve any placeholders.

Step 5: Troubleshooting

If a test notification does not arrive as intended, take the following steps:

1. Select Setup | Account Settings | Notification Templates from the main menu bar.
2. Go to the notification templates that you assigned to the notification triggers in the library and check the following:

• • • The notifications are in the Active status.
    • The notifications have a schedule that does not conflict with the library you set up.
    • The summarization method collects alarms for a specific time period. Also consider the Time Span for Summarizing Messages (in Minutes) value.

3. Select the Notification Contacts tab and check that the email addresses or phone numbers that you specified as notification contacts for each user account are correct
4. Check the notification delivery settings under Setup | System Administration | Notification Delivery.
   This only applies to PRTG on premises installations, not to PRTG Hosted Monitor instances.
5. Review the logs for system events of the type Notification and the respective notification's name.

Sensors can simulate an error. Go to the library's Overview tab, right-click a sensor, and select Simulate Error Status from the context menu. You see that the sensor status changes to the Down status and sends the following message: The sensor shows a Down status because of a simulated error. To resolve this issue, right-click the sensor and select Resume from the context menu. (code: PE034). This also triggers a notification for test purposes.