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Woken up at 3am by false hourly alerts? - here's how to get a good nights sleep

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Community Advisor

5/6/22

False alerts are bad news.  Apart from being very annoying, they can cause you to lose trust in your alerts, leading you to ignore real problems. Out of the box Adobe does not offer a way to turn off hourly alerts overnight. This can lead to false alerts being sent as volumes drop and the data becomes more volatile.  However, there is an easy method to disable hourly alerts during specific hours...

Imagine a scenario where you wanted to create an alert when 'orders' are below or equal to 1000, but you didn't want this alert to operate between 1:00am and 6:59am.

Set up:

1) Create a 'hit' level segment called 'non-core hours' where 'hour of day' is greater than or equal to '1:00am' AND 'hour of day' is less than or equal to '6:00am'

Andrew_Wathen__0-1651852044500.png

2) Create a calculated metric called 'Metric for core hours order alert' using an 'if' function:

  • Within 'logic_test' place your 'non-core hours' segment with the 'occurrences' metric nested inside it
  • Within 'value_if_true' add a 'Static Number' with a value of '1001' (Note: this needs to be any value which would not trigger an alert, in this case any number greater than 1000)
  • within 'value_if_false' add the 'Orders' metric (Note: this needs to be the metric you want to alert on during core hours, in this case 'orders')

Andrew_Wathen__0-1651854296661.png

3) Create an hourly granularity Alert called 'core hours order alert' where the calculated metric called 'Metric for core hours order alert' is below or equal to 1000

Andrew_Wathen__2-1651855051065.png

How the alert works:

During 1:00am to 6:59am, as long as you get at least 1 occurrence in each hour, the value will always be 1001 so the alert won't trigger.  During the rest of the day it will trigger if orders is equal or below 1000.

NOTE: this method also works for the 'anomaly' based alerting options.  As the calculated metrics returns a static value at the same time every night, anomaly detection does not see it as an anomaly (because it is the same every night!).

12 Comments

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Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

5/6/22

Great tip! I think this will be useful to a lot of users

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Community Advisor

6/1/22

this is brilliant - thanks @Andrew_Wathen_  - hope you are doing well!

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Level 2

6/2/22

This is such a super helpful tip!!!

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Employee Advisor

6/2/22

Great tip! I think this will be useful to a lot of users

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Community Advisor

6/24/22

I'm using the same setting some years now and I'm really happy how the alert works. Thanks for sharing it as a blog post @Andrew_Wathen_ - I wonder if we get a setting on the alert itself one day instead of creating a bunch of calculated metrics

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Level 1

9/8/22

Great tip @Andrew_Wathen_ 

Hopefully adobe makes it easy to select date range/days of week within the UI sometime soon

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Level 1

2/13/25

Esto es de gran utilidad, una pregunta, ¿sabrías decirme como se podría hacer esto mismo pero además añadiendo que la alerta solo funcione de lunes a viernes? 

 

 

Gracias!

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Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

2/13/25

@Antonio83 you can do the same trick as above, except in your segment you can use the Weekday/Weekend dimension.

 

Jennifer_Dungan_1-1739463911333.png

 

Use a similar calculated metric to set a static value for weekends to ensure the data is always above the threshold.

 

 

Google Translation:

Puedes hacer el mismo truco que el anterior, excepto que en tu segmento puedes usar la dimensión Día laborable/Fin de semana.

 

Utilice una métrica calculada similar para establecer un valor estático para los fines de semana y garantizar que los datos estén siempre por encima del umbral.

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Level 1

2/13/25

Hola Jennifer,

 

Si, yo probé esto mismo, pero en el gráfico del preview se muestra que la alerta habría saltado el sábado y el domingo, y es justo lo que yo quiero evitar.

Captura de pantalla 2025-02-13 a las 17.33.35.png

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Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

2/13/25

Ahh @Antonio83,

 

You can't add Weekend/Weekday directly into the Alert... you have to create a segment AND a calculated metric (forcing ALL data on the weekend to be above 52000

 

Jennifer_Dungan_0-1739465301630.png

 

 

 

Adding the dimension directly into the Alert will result in the logic looking for above 52000 and to be a weekday (which on a weekend will fail 100% of the time - hence 24 alerts on those days)

 

The calculated metric forces the "weekend" traffic to be a static value that will not trigger the alert, while allowing the weekdays to send the data as normal:

Jennifer_Dungan_1-1739465715839.png

 

 

 

Google Translation:

No puede agregar fin de semana/día laborable directamente a la alerta... debe crear un segmento Y una métrica calculada (obligando a que TODOS los datos del fin de semana estén por encima de 52000).

 

Agregar la dimensión directamente a la Alerta dará como resultado que la lógica busque por encima de 52000 y sea un día laborable (que en un fin de semana fallará el 100% del tiempo, por lo tanto, 24 alertas en esos días)

 

La métrica calculada obliga al tráfico del "fin de semana" a ser un valor estático que no activará la alerta, al tiempo que permite que los días laborables envíen los datos normalmente:

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Level 1

2/13/25

Gracias por tus respuestas Jennifer,

 

Yo lo que necesito es crear una alerta que funcione solo de lunes a viernes y en el horario de 08am a 08pm. He probado a hacer un segmento que haga cumplir estas dos condiciones e incluirlo en la métrica calculada pero no consigo el objetivo.

 

 

Gracias de nuevo por la ayuda.

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Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

2/13/25

Try a segment like this (Pruebe un segmento como este):

 

Jennifer_Dungan_0-1739470939774.png

 

And a calculated metric like this (Y una métrica calculada como esta):

Jennifer_Dungan_1-1739470982158.png

 

(change 1000 to an appropriate value, over 52000), and use the correct "value_if_false" metric to your needed alert metric / cambie 1000 a un valor apropiado, superior a 52000) y utilice la métrica "value_if_false" correcta para la métrica de alerta necesaria)