Customizing Predefined Alerts (User, System Administrator, and Flexfields Help)


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Customizing Predefined Alerts

You can customize predefined alerts in the following ways to suit your business needs:

Electronic Mail Integration

Oracle Alert is fully integrated with Oracle Office and can use Oracle Office to send electronic mail messages to your users. Since Oracle Office has gateways to other electronic mail systems, Oracle Alert can send messages to users on those systems as well. Oracle Alert can also use UNIX mail, VMS mail, or a custom mail system to send electronic mail messages to your users.

You open the Oracle Alert Options window and use the Mail Systems alternative region to specify the electronic mail application you wish to use with your predefined alerts. You enter the Name of your electronic mail application, the operating system Command you use to start the mail application, and any Parameters you wish to pass to the mail program.

If you are using Oracle Office, you need not specify an operating system Command. Once you enter the information for your mail application, check the In Use check box, then save your work. You can have only one mail application enabled at any given time.

Standard Alert Message Text

You can customize the message header and footer text that appears in all your alert message actions. Navigate to the Message Elements alternative region of the Oracle Alert Options window, and four message elements appear automatically. Each element represents a specific type of message text that appears in all your alert mail messages.

In the runtime version of Oracle Alert, you need to edit only the Message Action Header and Message Action Footer elements. Simply customize the text that appears to alter the text at the beginning and end of every alert message. You may also leave the text blank if you do not want to display any standard text in your alert messages. Save your work when you are done making changes in this window.

Alert Frequency

You can schedule the frequency you wish to run each predefined periodic alert. You may want to check some alerts every day, some only once a month, still others only when you explicitly request them. You have the flexibility to monitor critical exceptions every day, or even multiple times during a 24-hour period. And, you can set less significant exceptions to a more infrequent schedule; for example, a monthly schedule.

To change the frequency of a predefined alert, navigate to the Alerts window. Perform a query to display the predefined periodic alert you wish to modify, then alter the Frequency of the periodic alert.

Alert History

Oracle Alert can keep a history of exceptions and actions for a particular alert. Use the Alerts window to alter the number of days of history you wish to keep for an alert. Simply change the Keep N Days field to the number of days of history you wish to keep.

Suppressing Duplicates

If you do not want Oracle Alert to send repeated messages for the same alert exception, you can choose to suppress duplicate messages. If Oracle Alert finds a duplicate exception condition for the alert, it simply does not execute the action set members for that alert again.

Use the Suppress Duplicates check box in the Action Sets block of the Alerts window to specify this option. The default for the Suppress Duplicates check box is unchecked. If you check the Suppress Duplicates check box, you must also make sure you keep history for the alert at least one day longer than the number of days between alert checks. Oracle Alert uses the history information to determine if an exception is a duplicate.

Message Actions

If a predefined alert involves a message action, you can customize certain aspects of that message action. Navigate to the Actions block in the Alerts window by choosing the Actions button. In this block, move your cursor to the row representing the message action you want to customize, then choose the Action Details button to open the Action Detail window for that message action. You can modify the following features of the message action:

Recipient list--you can add or delete mail IDs in the List, To, Cc, Bcc, or Print For User fields. You should not modify any mail IDs listed with the format &Name, as they represent mail ID's defined by the alert output.

Printer--you can modify the name of the printer to which you want Oracle Alert to direct the message.

Text--you can modify the boilerplate text that you want your alert message to send. Do not edit any of the alert outputs (in the format &Name) used in the body of the text. For summary messages, edit only the opening and closing text within the summary message. Save your work when you finish making modifications.

Summary Threshold

Predefined alerts use one of three action types: detail action, summary action, and no exception action. A no exception action is straightforward in that Oracle Alert performs the defined action when no exceptions are found for the alert.

But how does Oracle Alert know when to perform a detail or a summary action? Oracle Alert can perform a detail action for every exception it finds, regardless of the number of exceptions, or Oracle Alert can perform a summary action for a unique set of exceptions. For example, you can receive individual mail messages for each exception found by an alert, or you can receive a single mail message summarizing all the exceptions found by the alert.

In the Members alternative region of the Action Sets block of the Alerts window, you can set a Summary Threshold to specify how many exceptions Oracle Alert can find before it should change the action from a detail action to a summary action.