Actions

Anodot Actions are specific tasks which a user can perform when investigating or reacting to an Anodot alert trigger. These actions can be performed in order to further explore the incident, to get context, to begin a remediation process, or initiate a workflow for incident management. Actions can be inside Anodot or connected to external third party systems, and can be easily configured and performed by Anodot users. 

This article includes:

• Creating Actions
• Assigning the Action to an Alert
• Working with Actions

Creating Actions

This section describes how to create an Action. Once created, the Action can be assigned to relevant alerts.

1. Click on the Alert Actions section just below the Alert notifications section.
   
   
   Note: If you do not see the “Alert Actions” section, this feature is not enabled in your account. Please contact support@anodot.com or your dedicated customer success manager to enable it.
   
2. Click + Add Action to display the following dialog:
   
   
   
3. Define the following:
   • Action Name - a way for you to easily identify the Action.
   • Link - the actual URL which will be called when the Action is performed.
   • Description - the text displayed on the Action ‘button’ itself.
     
     When creating the Action, you can also use Alert Variables.  This is particularly useful if you want to make the Action parameterized according to the data of the specific alert trigger the user received. For example, opening a Grafana dashboard which shows information per country (assuming country is a dimension of the metric), you can define the Link as “https://grafana.acme.com/dashboard/country={{country}}”
     
     
4. Click Create Action to create the Action. Note that this will not assign the Action to an alert; refer to Assigning the Action to an Alert.

Assigning the Action to an Alert

After creating an Action, you are automatically prompted to add it to an alert via the Actions dialog.

Select the Action you just created and click Add to Alert to add the Action. The Action is added to the alert and is available for users receiving the alert trigger.

Note that when several Actions are configured on an alert, they are highlighted in the Actions dialog, as shown below.

• To add an additional Action to an alert, click on it and then click the active Add To Alert button. 
• To remove an Action from the alert, click on that Action and the highlight is removed.

Working with Actions

This section describes additional Actions functionality, and includes:

• Making an Action the Primary Action
• Removing an Action from an Alert
• Editing an Action
• Viewing Actions in Channels
• Managing Actions
• Tracking Action Usage
• Action Types

Making an Action the Primary Action

From the Alert Actions section, click on the More icon and select Make Primary Action.

The Action is displayed at the top of the Actions list and marked with * Primary Action, as shown below. Primary Actions are also displayed in channels where only one Action can be shown (e.g. email); it is the only Action which is displayed.

Removing an Action from an Alert

From the Alert Actions section, click on the More icon and select Remove From Alert (see the image above to see the displayed menu options). The Action is removed from the alert.

Editing an Action

From the Alert Actions section, click on the More icon and select Edit. In the displayed dialog, edit the Action as required, and then click Update Action.

Viewing Actions in Channels

Once Actions are configured for an alert and that alert is triggered, those Actions are visible to the users subscribed to that alert. Currently, Actions are supported in the following channels: Email, Slack, Triage Screen and Webhook message. We will add Action support to additional channels based on customer demand.

Actions in Email

Note that the Action in this case - Explore in Grafana - is the Primary Action which was defined on the alert.

Actions in Slack

Note: Actions in Slack are only available in the new Slack app. See more details here.

As can be seen in this example, two different Action buttons are evident. There is no limitation on the number of Actions in this case. 

Actions in Triage Screen

When investigating an alert trigger via the new “Triage” screen, the Actions appear in the Overview tab as part of the “What to do next?” area.

Note that the “Send To” Action appears by default in this section and you do not need to add it explicitly to the alert.

Using Actions in custom implementations

If you are building a custom implementation to handle alert triggers using the Anodot Webhook channels you can use the Actions payload added to the webhook call. The updated documentation can be found here.

Managing Actions

Actions are attached to alerts, but they are global to the account, meaning that if you edit an Action in one alert, it will affect that Action in all the alerts to which it is attached.

For example, if you have an Action calling a third party system (e.g. Grafana) and now the URL for Grafana has changed, when you access any alert where this Action is defined and you change the URL, the URL will update in all the alerts. Note that on the bottom of the dialog you can see whether this action is used in additional alerts so you can understand the impact of any change you make.

 

Tracking Action Usage

Every time a user performs an action, that action usage is tracked by Anodot (without the user data). This is useful for several aspects:

• On the incident level - you can track for each incident when was an action taken to handle it and which type of action.
• On an account level - you can track which actions are being used more extensively and which are not, enabling you to fine tune the actions for the relevant alerts.

For the first use case, you can see when an action has been taken on an incident using the 'timeline' tab in the triage for that incident:

 

Notice that the entry in the timeline will show the action name and the action link.

 

For tracking action usage overall, you can use the relevant API or the relevant Service Usage metrics.

 

Action Types

Actions can be categorized around two dimensions:

• Action origin: System, User Defined, Common.
• Action type: Anodot Action, External Link, API.

The current implementation only supports “Outside URL” Actions and “User Defined” Actions. Additional type support is planned for the future.

 

Limitations

As mentioned throughout this article, actions are currently supported in the following channels:

1. Email 
2. Slack (New Slack app)
3. Webhook
4. Microsoft Teams
5. OpsGenie

We will be adding support to additional channels based on customer demand.