Alerts for Connected Devices

Alerts for Connected Devices help you proactively identify and respond to service degradations across your entire device fleet. By providing real-time anomaly detection for key performance metrics—latency, packet loss, and jitter—you can receive immediate notifications via email, webhook, or integrations when performance thresholds are crossed. This enables your team to take action and reduce your Mean-Time-to-Resolve (MTTR) before end-users are affected, ensuring a higher quality of service for your customers.

Prerequisites for Alerts for Connected Devices

To use Alerts for Connected Devices, ensure the following prerequisites are met:

Technical Requirements

• Your devices must be running Agent v8 or a later version.

• Alerts can only be configured for tests created using the new Test Settings UI.

User Permissions

• To create or edit alert rules, your user role must include the Edit alert rules permission.

• To configure alert notifications, your role must include the Edit alert notifications permission.

These permissions are enabled by default for the Organization Admin and Account Admin roles.

Key Differences between Alerts for Connected Devices and Standard Alerts

For users familiar with the main ThousandEyes platform, it is important to understand two key differences in how alerts for Connected Devices function:

• Manual Configuration Only: Connected Devices alerts use a manual configuration model, giving you direct control over setting exact thresholds for latency, packet loss, and jitter. Features available in other parts of the ThousandEyes platform, such as Adaptive Alerting and Dynamic Baselines, are not supported.

• Investigation in the Analytics Module: The investigation workflow is different. When you click the "view more on Connected Devices" link from an alert, you are taken directly to a pre-filtered view in the Analytics module, not the standard Test Views. This allows you to immediately begin a forensic investigation into the root cause of the issue.

Getting Started with Alerts for Connected Devices

Setting up alerts for your Connected Devices involves three main steps, from initial configuration to final investigation.

1. Configure an Alert Rule Create an alert rule to define the specific conditions that matter to you, such as latency exceeding 100ms or packet loss rising above 2%. This is where you tell ThousandEyes what to watch for.

   • For a detailed guide, see Configuring Alert Rules for Connected Devices.

2. Set Up Notifications Decide who gets notified when an alert triggers and how. You can send alerts to your team via email or integrate them into your incident management tools using webhooks.

   • Learn how to set up your notification channels in Managing Alert Notifications for Connected Devices.

3. View and Investigate Alerts When an alert becomes active, you can view its details, see which devices are affected, and use a deep link to jump directly into a pre-filtered Analytics view for root cause analysis.

   • This guide shows you how to manage and investigate your alerts: Viewing and Investigating Alerts for Connected Devices.

Core Alerting Concepts for Connected Devices

Alerts for Connected Devices are built on the same core principles as the rest of the ThousandEyes platform. While this guide covers the specifics for Connected Devices, you can learn more about the fundamental concepts in our main Alerts documentation.

Key concepts include:

• Alerting Basics: Learn the difference between an event, an alert, and a notification, and understand the alert lifecycle from triggered to cleared: Alerting Basics

• Severity Levels: Understand how to use severity levels (Info, Minor, Major, and Critical) to categorize the urgency of an alert: Alert Severity

• Alert Suppression: Learn how to prevent notifications during planned maintenance or testing periods: Alert Suppression Windows

• Notifications: Explore the different ways to receive alert notifications, including email and webhooks: Alert Notifications