When a service outage occurs, Uptime Infrastructure Monitor can generate an alert in a number of ways including sending an email, opening a Windows pop-up, or initiating a pager message. You can also define your own script alert that is executed on the monitoring station when an outage occurs. You can use the Script Alert option to create custom alerting methods that fit your exact needs.
Some examples of custom alerting implementations include:
- SMS modem-based alerting
- TAPI modem alerting
- Internal Problem Ticket creation system alerts
- On call team rotation
- Customized alert email body formatting
How custom alert scripts work
Custom alert scripts are defined with the Script Alert option on the Alert Profile page. The script is a path to a script or executable on the monitoring station system that UIM runs when a service outage occurs. You control the actions that the script or executable takes, which provides full control over how Uptime Infrastructure Monitor sends out alert notifications during a service outage.
For Windows alert scripts, the path used must use UNIX-style / instead of \ and must be quoted if your path contains spaces. For example:
C:/Program Files/uptime software/uptime/scripts/my_custom_alerter.bat
When UIM runs the script or executable, it passes on information about the specific service outage that triggered the alert. This information is passed using the system environment variables that are local to each execution of the recovery script. The script or executable is run once for each UIM user that is notified using this alert.
The environment variables passed to the alert script and their meanings are included in the following table but for the latest documentation please refer to the Alert profile and Action profile variables topics in the main UIM Help documentation.
| Variable | Description | Example Contents |
|---|---|---|
Service Message Fields These fields remain constant for each execution of your script associated with a single service outage. | ||
| UPTIME_ALERTTYPE | ||
| UPTIME_HOSTNAME | ||
| UPTIME_HOSTSTATUS | ||
| UPTIME_MESSAGE | ||
| UPTIME_SUBJECT | ||
| UPTIME_SVCNAME | ||
| UPTIME_SVCOUTPUT | ||
| UPTIME_SVCSTATUS | ||
| UPTIME_DATETIME | ||
User-Related Fields These fields change for each user passed to your script. The script is executed once for each user that you want notified. | ||
| UPTIME_CONTACTLOGINNAME | ||
| UPTIME_DESKTOPHOST | ||
| UPTIME_DESKTOPWORKGROUP | ||
| UPTIME_EMAIL | ||
| UPTIME_MOBILE | ||
| General Fields | ||
| UPTIME_SCRIPT | ||
| UPTIME_SMTPHELOSTRING | ||
| UPTIME_SMTPPASSWORD | ||
| UPTIME_SMTPPORT | ||
| UPTIME_SMTPSENDER | ||
| UPTIME_SMTPSERVER | ||
| UPTIME_SMTPUSER | ||
Environment variable examples
How the script or executable uses environment variables will vary depending on the language you have used to write your script or executable. The following examples illustrate how environment variables are accessed in several common languages: