Creating Data Alerts

Data alerts are triggered by conditions you define for your widgets. For example, if you have an Indicator widget that represents your company's revenue, you can define an alert that notifies you when this revenue reaches or falls below a certain threshold.

Sisense supports alerts for the following widgets:

  • Indicator Widgets
  • Area Chart Widgets
  • Bar Chart Widgets
  • Column Chart
  • Line Chart

For each type of widget you can add to Pulse, you can monitor a single value. For example, for Column charts you can monitor a single section (value) of a column. To monitor multiple values, you can add each value you want to monitor to Pulse separately.

When creating data alerts, you define the condition that triggers the alert. Sisense provides three alert conditions that can trigger an alert:

Threshold

Sisense notifies you when a threshold is reached following a build. This condition is useful for monitoring metrics that follow a regular, cyclical schedule.

Automatic

Sisense automatically notifies you when the Sisense alert engine identifies an anomaly in your data based on machine learning algorithms. The Sisense algorithm actively learns from your data and eliminates noise to identify anomalies in your data. Sisense's anomaly detection is based on a smoothing algorithm that takes the latest values into account. The more times an ElastiCube is built or a Live model is published, the more accurate Sisense becomes at identifying any anomalies and notifying you.

Always

For widgets based on ElastiCubes, Sisense notifies you after each build, regardless if there is a change in your data or not. For Live widgets that are supported on Sisense Linux, you set the frequency of the alerts.

In addition, you can configure advanced settings that determine who receives the alert and what channel the alert is sent through. For more information see Overview of Advanced Reporting Settings.

To create a data alert:

  1. For an Indicator widget, from the widget's menu, select Add To Pulse.
    For other types of widgets, right-click any value in the chart and select Add To Pulse.
  2. The Add to Pulse window is displayed.
  3. In the Name field, enter a meaningful name that represents your alert.
  4. In the Alert Condition area, select the condition that triggers the alerts.
    Threshold: Sisense defines the threshold value as the current value displayed in the widget. You can increase or decrease this value and define the equality and relational operators that determine when the threshold is met.
    Creating Data 5
    Automatic: Sisense automatically identifies anomalies in your data and alerts you.
    Creating Data 6
    Always: For widgets based on ElastiCubes, Sisense notifies you after each build, regardless if there is a change in your data or not. For Live widgets that are supported on Sisense Linux, you set the frequency of the alerts.
  5. Click Add to create the alert. The alert is added to Sisense Pulse.
    For additional advanced configuration options, see Overview of Advanced Reporting Settings.

Note:

When creating a pulse, the system inherits all of the existing filters of the asset and creates a filter for the specific selected value on the widget. If the selected value were based on a relational function or formula, in the pulse it would be transformed into an explicit filter, which means the resulting pulse would be based on invalid data.

Examples of such functions are Contribution and Running Sum (see Dashboard Functions Reference) for which the option to create a pulse is disabled.

Pulse Data Alerts for Live Models

Important:

The following only applies to Linux with Live Data Models.

For live data alerts supported by Sisense Linux, you can customize the default Alert Frequency. This means that you can configure how often the alert conditions are evaluated and so control the maximum number of alerts you receive.

Note:

Sharing, notifications, and security rules apply to live-based Pulses and ElastiCube -based Pulses, alike.

Configuring the Alert Frequency for Live Widgets (System Level)

The Sisense System Administrator can set the maximum frequency of alerts on the system-level. Attempting to set an alert frequency higher than that set on the system level results in the following message:

Customizing the Frequency for a Data Alert (Widget Level)

When you add a Pulse for a data point on a widget connected to a live data model, the following appears:

  1. Enter a name for the alert.
    Give the alert a meaningful name that will enable others to identify a live-based Pulse compared to an ElastiCube -based Pulse.
  2. Select an Alert Condition (see Creating Data Alerts for details).
  3. Set the Alert Frequency. You can configure Sisense to check if the alert condition is met every x minutes, hours, or days, and send an alert, if required.

    Note:

    • If you select 'Days', you will be prompted to set a time of day for the alert to be sent.
    • For all options, you must enter a natural number. For example, '1' or '2', but not '1.5' or '2.5'.

When you add a new data alert, it is no longer connected in any way to the original widget from which it was added. A separate entity and query for this Pulse is saved in the system.

Editing a Data Alert for Live Data Models

Edit live-based pulses in the same way as you edit any other Pulse. When you edit a live-based Pulse, you can also change the frequency.