Events

One of our core principles is to make data actionable. This is made possible by a set of powerful functionalities of the platform: event triggers, events and notifications. In short, event triggers are used to define rules on a metric that eventually will lead to an event and possible notifications.

Using event triggers

Event triggers are used to configure your business rules on metrics. The configuration of a trigger is of crucial importance since this will lead to events that you and/or a system will act on. Make sure you activate the trigger and give it a recognizable name (1), select the subjects the event trigger applies to (2), define the conditions per level that should trigger an event (3) and consider wether you need one of the advanced options (4).

Managing event triggers

Event triggers and its rules have a lot of options to make it useful in many circumstances. Here you find the actions and configuration information for creating or updating an event trigger.

Choosing subjects

Select the subject type and specific subjects the event trigger applies to.

Include and exclude subjects based on properties

The behavior of including and excluding subjects based on a property differs from selecting individual subjects.

One or more properties	Result
Include	The trigger applies to the subjects that match all properties
Exclude	The trigger does not apply to subjects that match one of the selected properties

Configuring event rules

The no-code configuration of a event rule gives a lot of opportunities and is very powerful.

Levels

You can see the levels of priority when configuring the rules of a trigger. Just so you know, you do not need to set every level. For example, an metric can move from Problem to OK, depending on how you configured the rules. Here is the information about the levels:

Status	Priority	Color
Problem	High	Red
Warning	Medium	Orange
Info	Low	Blue
OK	(no action needed)	Green

Levels can be combined with the statement AND or with the statement OR. Just add another rule or condition to see the AND/OR functionality appear.

Below you can see the banners to click on to start adding event rules.

Conditions

You can add problem, warning and info rules with one or more conditions. The platform allows to combine rules and conditions that lead to many configuration possibilities. Let’s dive deeper to give you a good understanding of these possibilities.

Condition types

Condition type	Description
Threshold	A threshold condition evaluates two or three inputs based on a function
Change	A change condition evaluates the difference between two inputs
Text match	A text match condition evaluates two text inputs
Geofence condition	A geofence condition evaluates certain conditions between two location inputs

Condition inputs

Input	Description
Metric	The metric of a subject
Property	The property value of a subject
Static value	A positive or negative numerical value, a text value or a location or area value

Down here you see the available condition inputs in the selector.

Metric aggregation function and period

A metric input in either a threshold or change condition can hold an aggregation. Next to the most recent value you can use the aggregation functions:

• Average
• Minimum
• Maximum
• Sum of values
• Number of measurements

Over a time period of:

• Seconds
• Minutes
• Hours
• Days
• Weeks

In this image a selector where a threshold condition is configured with an aggregation is shown:

Condition calculations

You can use functions that will behave like operators in a calculation. The available functions differ per type of condition as stated in the table below.

Function	Example	Threshold condition	Change condition
Difference	5-20 = -15	Yes	Yes
Absolute difference	5-20 = 15	Yes	Yes
Percentage difference	(15-20)/20*100 = -25%	Yes	Yes
Absolute percentage difference	(15-20)/20*100 = 25%	Yes	Yes
Multiplication	20 * 15 = 300	Yes	No
Division	20 / 15 = 1.33	Yes	No
Addition	20 + 15 = 35	Yes	No

Down here you see the possible functions in the selector of a threshold condition.

Constraints

A event rule can have one or more occurrence and/or time constraints. The possibilities speak for themselves when you see the screenshot below.

Constraint	Format	Example
Within a time frame	Trigger only when it occurs for at least X consecutive hours	You only want an event when the temperature is 25 degrees for a longer time
Occurrence and within time frame	Trigger only when it occurs at least X times within X hours	You only want an event when the electricity peaks occur several times within a time frame
Specific days and times	Trigger only when it occurs on specific days and times	You want to have this event only during working hours

Here you see an example for a configuration in the webapp.

Advanced settings

The advanced event trigger options have to do with time. We recommend to read the advanced options carefully in combination with the API docs about sending measurements and think of the way you send measurements to the Blockbax Platform before you make a choice wether you want to enable the advanced options or not.

Timing setting	Description
Advance time for all measurements	An event trigger keeps its own time. Time advances when new measurements come in. When time advances all values are extrapolated to this respective time. By default time is advanced only by measurements of selected metrics. Enable this setting to advance time for all measurements of a subject.
Only evaluate for equal timestamps	Be aware that history can never be rewritten. When newer measurements are already processed older measurements received later are ignored. To allow for a slight imbalance enable this setting to only evaluate conditions for measurements with equal timestamps.

The options are explained in the webapp as well when you click in the link ‘show advanced settings’.

Examples

We’ve published a blog that explains the powerful possibilities of the event triggers and provide you with ideas on how to use them.

Editing and deleting event triggers

Removing an event trigger will have the following consequences:

• Associated events will be removed for all subjects.
• Dashboard panels using this event trigger need to be updated.

So, please be careful. This where you can edit and delete an event trigger:

Using events

Events are your friend, because they help you to understand what is happening so you can take the action that is needed. In the events overview page, you can filter on subject, metrics, event triggers and properties (1), so you can make a cross section of the events you like to see. In addition, you can filter on the status of an event (2) or within in a certain time-window (3). You can use the arrows (4) to jump to different time-windows and the pause button (4) to (un)freeze your current stream of events. The first of the buttons (5) can be toggled to see grouped events and the second is to show active events. Grouped events are grouped by the number of times they occurred based on the selected period and active events are still running (red. events without end date) events. The list of events (6) is constrained on the filters you have applied.

Showing event details

The event details are shown when clicking on one of the events in the overview page (see previous section). Here you can see some details (1) regarding the level, period and description. You can also hover over a point on the graph which will reveal a tooltip with additional information (2) about timing and values relevant for the trigger. If you have defined a time period in your trigger, such as a rule that must occur for over 30 minutes, this will also be visually represented on the graph (3). Lastly, it is possible to configure multiple rules for an event to trigger, if there is more than one rule, occurrences or time constraints defined , you will be able to scroll down the page and visually inspect each rule that has been met (4).

Here you can see a Blockbaxer navigating through the events including zooming in on an particular event. Note that you can click and drag on the various charts to zoom in on a defined time period.

Using notifications

Notification are used to get updates within the platform, via e-mail and/or SMS. The platform notifications are visible by clicking on the bell in the top-right corner of your screen (1). Once opened you can navigate to the notification settings (2), only show the unread notifications (3), mark all your notifications as read (4) or click on a notification to directly navigate to the event (5).

Configuring notifications

The default settings can be applied level-wide (1). For example, you can quickly enable notifications for all Problem events or start to receive weekly-digests. If needed, you can overwrite the default settings by using custom settings per metric per event level (2). Optionally, you can also receive notifications via e-mail and/or SMS.