How to use the Alerts tile
The Alerts tile allows you to view alerts on your dashboards and perspectives.
You can add alerts tiles to any dashboard or perspective.
For more information about Azure Alerts see Overview of alerts in Microsoft Azure.
How to configure an Alerts tile
Add a new tile to a dashboard and choose the Alerts tile.
Select the visualization for your Alerts tile and click next.
Note: You can choose between the List and the Donut visualization for either Resources, Groups, or Subscriptions.
ListThe Alerts list shows a list of alerts.
You can drilldown from an alert on the Alerts list, to view that alert's drilldown page in Dashboard Server. From there the view in portal
button at the top right of the page, allows you to link to the Azure portal to view the alert.
DonutThe Donut tile shows a summary of the number of alerts either by severity,
alert state or monitor condition . Clicking on a donut segment or on the key shows a list of alerts with that severity,alert state or monitor condition .
Scope:
The scope section allows you to define the objects for which alerts are shown.
Scope options on dashboardsTip: If you experience any problems with scoping tiles, you'll find FAQs and help in the article How to scope tiles.
Note: By default, results are shown across all subscriptions (unless the subscription option is chosen to specify only one or more subscriptions).
Filter by tenant By default results are shown across all tenants. In Dashboard Server 4.7 and above a user who has access to multiple tenants will see a filter by tenant option.
If you see the message "You do not have access to all of the tenants currently selected" or "Tenant ID could not be resolved"In a multi-tenant environment a user who does not have access to all tenants will see this message if they attempt to edit a scope containing tenants that they do not have access to. This may be because:
- One Dashboard Server admin has added a tile scoped to tenants that other Dashboard Server admins do not have permissions to.
- The customer/tenant is no longer serviced by this Customer Service Provider (CSP), so the tenant has been permanently removed for all Dashboard Server admins.
Symptoms
A tile scope shows:
"You do not have access to all of the tenants currently selected. Click here to reset which will remove those tenants from the scope."
Tenants the user does not have access to show as:
"Tenant ID could not be resolved"
Procedure
The message warns users that they do not have permissions to all the tenants in the scope.
If the user chooses to reset and therefore edit the scope then the tenants that they do not have access to will be removed. If saved this scope will also have those tenants removed for users who do have access to them.
It is not possible for the user to edit the scope without those tenants being removed from the scope.
Where a tenant has been removed permanently you may wish to reset the scope to remove the unresolvable tenants.
List List allows you to select several individual items to show.
You can add multiple
items . To remove anitem click the x to the right of its name.Tip: Start typing and after two characters you'll see suggestions that match the name appear.
Note: It depends on the tile what happens when you select more than one item. For example, when you select two virtual machines for a Status tile, you'll see the status of those VMs individually. When you select two virtual machines for a Cost Management tile, you'll see the cost for the two VMs added together.
Resource group Select one or more resource groups.
Filter by type:
Tick filter by type to only show resources of a particular type within the chosen resource group.
Subscription Select one or more subscriptions from the dropdown box if you wish to restrict results to only one or more subscriptions. When this is not used results are shown across all subscriptions.
Filter by type:
Tick filter by type to only show resources of a particular type within the chosen subscription.
Tags Select items with a particular tag. Add the tag name and the tag value you want to use to search for. If you select multiple tags, the search automatically 'ANDs' the tags which means the scope only contains items which are tagged with all the tags listed.
Filter by type:
Tick filter by type to only show resources of a particular type within the chosen tag(s).
Type Scope type can be used to show all resources of a particular type, for example all databases across all subscriptions, by typing
databasesand selectingSQL databases.Show hidden types This works in the same way as the Show hidden types option in the Azure portal.
Hidden types include some ancillary resources which are created/managed by Azure infrastructure. It might be useful to display these resources when cleaning up your resource groups or subscriptions.
Scope options on perspectivesNote: If you never used a perspective, you should read Working with perspectives before scoping tiles on perspectives.
The power of perspectives is that tiles on a perspective can use a dynamic scope. A dynamic scope considers the currently viewed
resource . A dynamic scope consists of two different states:the configuration of the scope in the tile (for example, "consider child objects of type logical disk for the currently viewed object")
the actual resolved scope that depends on which
resource you are currently viewing ("this object has 5 child objects of type logical disk")
After configuring the dynamic scope once in the tile, you'll get different results depending how the scope is resolved on the different
resources you are viewing.On perspectives, you can scope tiles to:
this resource
(only on perspectives for resources)The tile's scope will be the resolved to the resource that is currently viewed. child resources
(only on perspectives for resource groups and subscriptions)When you select this option, the scope of the tile will be resolved to all resources that are in the group or subscription that is currently viewed.
If you want to narrow the scope down to a specific type of resource in the group or subscription, you can filter for one specific type of resource.
other resources Gives you the normal, non-dynamic scope options you are used to when scoping tiles on dashboards. This means the tile will not dynamically adapt it's content to the currently viewed
resource , it will always show data for the staticresource picked here.Since the power of perspectives is that their tiles can show data for different
resources depending on whatresource is currently being viewed, you should only select this option when you are sure that there is no relationship between the desired scope and the currently viewedresource .- Scope options on perspectives
Note: If you never used a perspective, you should read Working with perspectives before scoping tiles on perspectives.
The power of perspectives is that tiles on a perspective can use a dynamic scope. A dynamic scope considers the currently viewed
resource . A dynamic scope consists of two different states:the configuration of the scope in the tile (for example, "consider child objects of type logical disk for the currently viewed object")
the actual resolved scope that depends on which
resource you are currently viewing ("this object has 5 child objects of type logical disk")
After configuring the dynamic scope once in the tile, you'll get different results depending how the scope is resolved on the different
resources you are viewing.On perspectives, you can scope tiles to:
this resource
(only on perspectives for resources)The tile's scope will be the resolved to the resource that is currently viewed. child resources
(only on perspectives for resource groups and subscriptions)When you select this option, the scope of the tile will be resolved to all resources that are in the group or subscription that is currently viewed.
If you want to narrow the scope down to a specific type of resource in the group or subscription, you can filter for one specific type of resource.
other resources Gives you the normal, non-dynamic scope options you are used to when scoping tiles on dashboards. This means the tile will not dynamically adapt it's content to the currently viewed
resource , it will always show data for the staticresource picked here.Since the power of perspectives is that their tiles can show data for different
resources depending on whatresource is currently being viewed, you should only select this option when you are sure that there is no relationship between the desired scope and the currently viewedresource .Timeframe:
The timeframe section allows you to determine the timeframe for the data. You can choose either to use page timeframe, which allows users viewing the page to change the timeframe on the fly, or for you to set a fixed specific timeframe which will ignore the page timeframe settings.
What is the page timeframe?The page timeframe is the timeframe setting a dashboard
or perspective is currently using. When a user changes the page timeframe, all tiles that use the page timeframe will adapt to the new timeframe. Tiles that don't use the dynamic page timeframe aren't affected and won't change.
The Alerts tile timeframe shows a maximum time period of last 30 days. This is because Azure only stores 30 days worth of Alerts data.
Filters:
The filter section allows you to control which alerts are shown by the tile.
For more information about Azure Alerts see Overview of alerts in Microsoft Azure.
Settings for different visualizations:
Settings for ListsSort
Sort allows you to change how the list is sorted. You can sort ascending or descending by:
last modified
monitor condition
name
raised
severity
Limit
Allows you to define a maximum of alerts that will be shown by the list tile.
Columns
The columns section allows you to show the column titles, rename titles, sort and hide columns in the Alert list.
Note: If you want to be able to resize the width of columns, you need to show the column titles (by activating the check box show column titles). This enables you to control the default width of the columns by dragging them to the size you want. It also enables your users to temporarily change the column width by dragging the columns to the size they want while they are looking at the dashboard.
Note: When resizing the width of columns, make sure to leave enough space in the last column for the update state functionality to be shown:
Note: Even if you show column titles, the severity column won't show a title because it only contain the severity icons.
Display
Use the slider to adjust the font size.
Settings for DonutsGrouping
When configuring the Alerts Donut tile the grouping section allows you to select whether the donut shows by severity,
alert state or monitor condition .Display
Size mode:
Default Displays the donut scaled to the height of the tile. Fill Enlarges the donut to use the whole width of the tile. If you chose the fill option and show the legend, you can define the size of the legend with a slider. Show legend:
Allows you to show or hide the legend of the graph.
Click done to save the tile.
The tile now shows alerts according to your settings.
Known Issues
Blank drilldown page after clicking on an alert in Dashboard Server
If you have upgraded from v4.4 to v4.5 you will not have the pre-populated Alert drilldown perspectives. You can populate the drilldown page by creating two new perspectives as described below.
Drilldown by clicking on an alert in an Alert list.
Click the small gray plus button to add a new perspective.
Click on the Edit JSON button
Copy the JSON below and paste it into the JSON box, overwriting everything already there.
Copy{
"content": {
"_type": "layout/list",
"contents": [
{
"_type": "layout/column",
"columns": [
{
"contents": [
{
"_type": "layout/list",
"contents": [
{
"_type": "tile/azure-structure",
"config": {},
"description": "",
"title": "Structure"
}
]
}
],
"width": 47.914
},
{
"contents": [
{
"_type": "layout/list",
"contents": [
{
"_type": "tile/azure-monitoralert-properties",
"config": {},
"description": "",
"title": "Monitor"
}
]
}
],
"width": 52.085
}
]
},
{
"_type": "tile/text",
"config": {
"display": {
"contentTemplate": "<pre class='u-text-normal'>{{properties.essentials.description}}</pre>"
}
},
"description": "",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"_type": "tile/azure-monitoralert-history",
"config": {
"display": {
"autohide": true,
"columnOverrides": {},
"columns": [
"comments",
"description",
"modificationEvent",
"oldValue",
"newValue",
"modifiedAt",
"modifiedBy"
],
"customColumns": {},
"rowLink": "",
"showHeaders": true
}
},
"description": "",
"title": "History"
},
{
"_type": "tile/azure-monitoralert-smart-group",
"config": {
"display": {
"columns": [
"severity",
"name",
"targetResourceGroup",
"targetResourceName",
"targetResourceType",
"startDateTime",
"alertState"
]
},
"source": {
"alertStates": [],
"limit": 250,
"monitorConditions": [],
"monitorServices": [],
"severities": [],
"timeframe": {
"range": "last30days",
"type": "fixed"
}
}
},
"description": "",
"title": "Smart Group"
}
]
},
"id": "43e1362a-8cef-4bce-8ac9-f7de0f46242c",
"match": {
"type": "azure/alert"
},
"name": "Alert",
"rank": -1000,
"derivedFrom": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000",
"createdFromReference": {
"packId": "ddb53c1e-ffe4-40ad-bdc2-22b0bcad5e30",
"itemId": "b09678cb-6312-402b-8acd-f956d30ea2ac",
"packversion": "1.0"
}
}Click the apply changes button below the Perspective JSON box.
Publish the perspective.
Click the small gray plus button to add another new perspective.
Copy the JSON below and paste it into the JSON box, overwriting everything already there.
Copy{
"content": {
"_type": "layout/list",
"contents": [
{
"_type": "layout/column",
"columns": [
{
"contents": [
{
"_type": "layout/list",
"contents": [
{
"_type": "tile/object-properties",
"config": {
"display": {
"path": "properties.context"
}
},
"description": "",
"title": ""
}
]
}
],
"width": 100
}
]
}
]
},
"id": "3248ba18-bc23-4d91-99b0-3574eaf1ce20",
"match": {
"type": "azure/alert"
},
"name": "Context",
"rank": -2000,
"derivedFrom": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000",
"createdFromReference": {
"packId": "ddb53c1e-ffe4-40ad-bdc2-22b0bcad5e30",
"itemId": "74bf5348-261d-41e8-8cb3-08e97bdba809",
"packversion": "1.0"
}
}Go back to your Alerts list tile, and click on another alert to check that the Alert and Context perspectives are shown.