What are triggers?

Introduction

To create, edit or delete a trigger

How do I define an incident that triggers an email when raised?

Introduction

In Entuity, a trigger is used to associate an action to the changing state of an incident. You can create triggers that are associated to a particular incident, or create global triggers that you can associate to all or a defined set of triggers.

With triggers, you can control the following:

• what state causes a trigger to action.
• if there is any delay to that action.
• whether the state of the incident after a delay (precondition) impacts on the action.

Triggers are useful, for example, when designing an event system with inbuilt escalation processes. You could create a trigger that would notify a network administrator when a particular incident has been opened for an hour, and also define a second trigger that would email a senior network administrator if the incident were to remain open for 2 hours.

To create, edit or delete a trigger:

1. Click Main Menu and then Administration. This will open the Administration page.
2. Click Event Administration to open the Event Administration page.
3. Click the Incidents tab. You can create, edit or delete a trigger via one of two ways:
   • clicking the Add new incident window and then clicking the Triggers tab.
     
     
     
     
   • the Edit Global Triggers button.
     
     
     
     
4. Click Add to open the Create Trigger window.
   
   
   
   
5. Enter a Name. The enabled box is ticked by default, but you can untick this to disable the trigger if you desire.
6. Enter a Description for the trigger, e.g. its purpose.
7. Specify when the trigger is applied in the On Transition To dropdown field, one of the following:
   
   
   
   
   • Any Change - when you want the action to occur whenever there is a change in the incident. This is useful when forwarding events to third party software and you want to ensure all incidents are forwarded.
     This option should be selected if you require the trigger to be activated when an already open incident receives an update event. Note, the 'Opened' or 'Opened or Reopened' options would not activate the trigger in the case where an incident is updated.
   • Opened - action is only run once for the incident, when it is first raised.
   • Reopened - action is not run the first time the incident is raised, but it is run each time the incident is subsequently reopened.
   • Opened or Reopened - action is run the first time the incident is raised and each time the incident is subsequently reopened.
   • Closed - action is run each time the incident is closed.
   • Expired - action is run each time the incident is expired.
8. In the Condition dropdown field, specify the condition applied to tests, either:
   
   
   
   
   • None - Entuity always processes the rule.
   • All tests must succeed - Entuity only processes the rule when all tests are met.
   • At least one test must succeed - Entuity processes the rule when at least one test succeeds.
   
   If you specify an option other than 'None', you will be prompted to Add, Edit or Delete condition tests. Please see this article for further help and information on condition tests.
   
   It can be useful to add a condition that only allows the trigger to be activated when the incident either transitions into the 'Open' state, or an already Open incident is updated. To do this:
   
   1. Set On Transition To to 'Any Change'.
   2. Add a Condition Test of the type 'Groovy Script Test', with the following syntax: state==1. The state attribute indicates whether the incident is now in the Open (1), Closed (2), or Expired (4) state.
      
      
9. Specify if and for how long you want a delay before an action is performed in the Delay fields.
10. If you have set Delay to anything other than None, you can specify an additional test before the action steps are run in the State After Delay dropdown field. For example, if Delay is set to 30 minutes and State After Delay is set to Open, then EMS will only run the action steps for an incident that is in an Open state 30 minutes after it was raised. Specify from one of the following:
    
    
    
    
    • Open.
    • Closed.
    • Expired.
    • Open or Closed.
    • Any.
11. Specify the action steps that the trigger applies in the Action Steps section.
12. Click OK to save your trigger, otherwise click Cancel.

To edit a trigger, select it from the list of triggers in the Triggers tab and click Edit.

To delete a trigger, select it from the list of triggers in the Triggers tab and click Delete.

How do I define an incident that triggers an email when raised?

Please see this article for further help and information on defining an incident that triggers an email when raised.