Defining an alert

BMC AppSight alerts accentuate operations that are recorded into the log, displaying them separately and following them up with actions. The alert is a combination of conditioned operations and the follow-up action. The alert's condition and related action is operation specific.

To send an alert on an operation:

1. Right-click a recording session and select Recording Profile from the popup menu. The <black box> Recording Profile screen opens.
2. In the Operations tab, select an Operation. Right-click and select Add Alert or click Add New Alert. The Add Alert dialog opens.
   
   
3. Select the Operation Text that triggers the alert. The alert is triggered whenever:
   • The text in the Include field is recorded
   • The text in the Exclude field is not recorded.
      Use this option for recording operations that have expected results.
4. Select the result that triggers the alert. You may select either Failed, Successful, or Both to ensure alerting on the problem.
5. In the Duration field you can set a condition that specifies whether the alert is triggered or not, based on the time it took for an operation to execute.
6. For IIS operations, you can set a Tag value that specifies whether the alert will be triggered or not, based on an HTTP header.
    When selecting Any, the alert will be triggered for any type of tag in an HTTP header. The alert can also be set for a specific tag; the possible tag types are:
   • FollowTX
   • Group
   • Transaction
      For each type, a specific value can be set. The alert is triggered when the defined value is detected in one of the tagged HTTP headers.
7. Select an action to be activated by the alert. The available actions are:
   • Add Comment
   • Call Function
   • Net Send
   • Record Alert
   • Resume Recording
   • Run Application
   • Save Sessions to Log
   • Save Current Session and Create New Session
   • Send email
   • Set Recording Profile
   • Show Process List
   • Stack Dump
   • Suspend Recording
8. Add required information where relevant. For example, Add Comment requires the comment text.
9. Select whether to show the alert in the Alerts tab of the Log Details pane.
10. Select a time interval for ignoring multiple alerts.
11. Click OK.
     The Alert appears on the Alerts List pane of the Operations tab.

Defining recording alert types in the Code Console

Different levels of alerts are available depending on whether an executable, function or source code line is selected in the Filter Tree of the Code Recording Profile window. AppSight can therefore implement alerts at the following three levels:

• Global Level Alerts
• Function Level Alerts
• Code Line Level Alerts

Alert type selections

Depending on which object you select in the Code Recording Profile window panes, different alert types are available for selection from the Alert Type drop-down list:

• When defining a global alert, you may select from the following three alert types: Exception/Timer/Crash
• When defining a function alert, you may select from the following six alert types: Exception/Timer/Crash/Entry/Return/Exit Due to an Exception.
• When you define an alert at line level, you may select an additional seventh alert type: Reach line.

Alert trigger action icons in the Code Console

A different icon represents each alert trigger type displayed in the Recording Tree pane of the BMC AppSight Code Console as follows:

After you have defined alerts, they will be included in your recording. Information about the defined alerts that occurred during the recording is displayed in the Alerts tab of the AppSight Code Console (if they are still stored in the memory buffer or saved in a BMC AppSight log).