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Sending an SMS notification

Sending an SMS notification

You can send SMS alerts to notify on data hosted in a Activity Tracker instance.

As of 28 March 2024 the IBM Log Analysis and IBM Cloud Activity Tracker services are deprecated and will no longer be supported as of 30 March 2025. Customers will need to migrate to IBM Cloud Logs, which replaces these two services, prior to 30 March 2025. For information about IBM Cloud Logs, see the IBM Cloud Logs documentation.

To send an SMS alert, you can choose 1 of the following options:

  • Integrate with the IBM Cloud Monitoring service to send SMS alerts.

    Use this option when you need alerts on log data alongside system health metrics.

  • Integrate with PagerDuty to send SMS alerts.

    Use this option when you require call times and escalation management processes.

Send an SMS notification by using the IBM Cloud Monitoring service

When the Activity Tracker service sends a notification to the IBM Cloud Monitoring service, an event is created in the IBM Cloud Monitoring instance. You can then configure the IBM Cloud Monitoring service to send an SMS.

CComplete the following steps to get an SMS notification when an alert in the Log Analysis service is triggered:

Step 1. Configure an alert in IBM Cloud Activity Tracker

In the Activity Tracker web UI, configure a Monitoring alert.

When an alert is triggered, a notification is sent to the Monitoring instance that you have configured. Then, you manage alerts through the Events view section in the Monitoring UI.

Step 2. Configure the Monitoring instance

Complete the following steps:

  1. Define an IBM Cloud Event Notifications notification channel in your Monitoring instance.

  2. Define an alert from the event that triggers the IBM Cloud Activity Tracker alert.

    In the Events section of the Monitoring UI, configure an event that send an SMS notification based on the alert that youd defined previously:

    1. Select an alert. Then select Create Alert from Event.

    2. Enter a name, a description, a group, and the severity level. The group default is set unless you specify a custom one.

    3. Define the condition that triggers the SMS notification.

      Specify events that match the alerts being sent to Monitoring from Activity Tracker. For example, you can indicate LogDNA or the name of the alert.

      Set the Scope to everywhere.

      If you want Monitoring to send alerts to IBM Cloud Event Notifications to be sent on as SMS message as soon as possible, specify Trigger values in the Monitoring alert definition to be as low as possible.

    4. Select 1 or more notification channels. Make sure you select the IBM Cloud Event Notifications channel that you configured to notify thorugh the IBM Cloud Event Notifications service.

Step 3. Configure the IBM Cloud Event Notifications service

Complete the following steps:

  1. Provision an IBM Cloud Event Notifications instance.
  2. Configure an authorization that grants IBM Cloud Monitoring access to IBM Cloud Event Notifications.
  3. Configure the IBM Cloud Event Notifications instance.

Send an SMS notification by using the PagerDuty On Call Service

When the Activity Tracker service sends a notification (event) to PagerDuty, an alert incident is created in PagerDuty and an SMS is sent if the escalation policy and on-call responder details include the rule to send to an SMS number.

  • An incident is the issue that needs to be resolved. It can have 3 states: triggered, acknowledged, and resolved

  • An incident triggers a PagerDuty service that generates 1 or more notifications to go out to on-call responders according to the service's escalation policy. SMS is a type of notification. You must configure a service so that it includes the escalation policy that indicates how to connect a service to individual users and schedules.

    A service includes information about the Activity Tracker service as an inbound integration that sends notifications to PagerDuty.

    A service profile provides information such as collaboration across teams, who owns the service, who’s on-call, how to contact the Team responsible for the service and more.

  • A User Profile includes information about on-call responders such as the phone number, SMS number, and email address. The information is used to contact the user when an incident is assigned to the user. You must configure the user profiles and check that the SMS details are correct.

  • An SMS provides basic information about the alert. The alert can include 1 or more incidents. When multiple incidents are triggered and assigned to a user, the SMS notification bundles all notifications for the user into 1 SMS. You can click on an incident link to see more details. You can acknowledge or resolve the incident with a text reply.

    The maximum number of characters in a text message is 160. Any text message that has more than 160 characters is truncated.

  • PagerDuty publishes the SMS number list so a user can easily validate the sender of the SMS. For more information, see Notification Phone Numbers.

Complete the following steps to get an SMS notification when an alert in the Activity Tracker service is triggered:

  1. Create a PagerDuty service.

  2. Configure the support user in PagerDuty who will receive SMS alert messages.

    Make sure a valid mobile number is provided for SMS in the user's Contact Information and that the Notification Rules for the user indicates that an SMS is to be sent to the mobile number. If these items are not configured correctly, the user will not receive SMS messages.

  3. Configure a PagerDuty Escalation Policy and for Notify specify the support user.

  4. In the Activity Tracker UI, configure a PagerDuty alert.