4.0 Dashboard Alerts

With the Custom Dashboards configured you can now choose to configure email alerts based upon conditions met. Alerts are only available for Visualisations of type Graph.

Custom Dashboards provide live information, but for some you will want to receive notifications when certain criteria has been reached. Two elements require configuring, email and the alert itself: Email and Alert

4.1 Grafana Email Configuration

What

Use this process to configure email in Grafana so alert notifications can be sent by email.

When/Why

Configure email before you create or test alert notifications.

How

Edit the Grafana configuration file on the FileWave Server:

/usr/local/etc/filewave/grafana/conf/filewave.ini

Add or update the [smtp] section with your mail server details. Set enabled = true so Grafana can actually send mail. If your mail relay requires client certificate authentication, you can also set cert_file and key_file.

[smtp]
enabled = true
host = smtp.example.com:587
user = smtp-user
# If the password contains # or ; wrap it in triple quotes, for example """#password;"""
password = """smtp-password"""
cert_file =
key_file =
skip_verify = false
from_address = alerts@example.com
from_name = FileWave Grafana
ehlo_identity =

Leave the existing FileWave-specific settings in place, and only change the SMTP values you need. If your relay does not use client certificates, leave cert_file and key_file empty.

For the full list of available SMTP options, see Grafana's configuration documentation.

After saving the file, restart the FileWave Server so Grafana reloads the configuration:

sudo fwcontrol server restart

Then open Grafana, go to the Alerting section, choose Contact points, create or edit an Email contact point, and send a test notification.

4.2 Configure Grafana Dashboard Alerts

What

Dashboard alerts notify you when a graph crosses a condition you define.

Alerts are available only for visualizations of type Graph.

When/Why

Use an existing custom dashboard graph as the data source for an alert.

How

Open the graph's drop-down menu and select Edit:

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Select the Notification icon and configure the alert condition. In this example, the alert triggers when the total device count exceeds 20.

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Add a message that tells recipients what crossed the threshold and what they should check next.