5 Replies Latest reply on Jul 9, 2018 8:43 AM by Toby Erkson

    VizAlertsConfig operating under an odd Timezone, alerts not going off

    Alexandre Perras
    Alexandre Perras Nov 20, 2017 11:03 AM

      Hi,

       

      We finished configurating VizAlerts last week and set up some test alerts, some on 4 hour schedules and some on 15 minute schedules. None of them are actually generating any emails when subscribed to, and my best guess is the ran_last_at & run_next_at fields in the VizAlertsConfig workbook (see attached). At the time of posting this (2017-11-20 13:52:00), it is indicating that those 3 tests were last ran in the future. I understand that the workbook is set up under a different Timezone (used a NOW() calculated field to reveal this), but I'm very confused about those two fields. When I run the vizalerts.exe task, the alerts work appropriately, so appears to definitely be a scheduling problem.

       

      Perhaps something to do with the schedule settings? Has anyone experienced a similar issue ?

       

      Thank you,

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        • 1. Re: VizAlertsConfig operating under an odd Timezone, alerts not going off
          Matt Coles
          Matt Coles Employee Nov 20, 2017 11:16 AM (in response to Alexandre Perras)

          Those times are all in UTC, which is how they're stored in PostgreSQL. I've never seen any issues with those times, so I suspect they are not the problem. run next at simply tells VizAlerts when the alert is next scheduled to run, and VizAlerts maintains a text file that tells it the last time it ran them. The ran last at time isn't actually used for much anymore.

           

          How often is your VizAlerts task set up to run? Do the workbooks you subscribed to have alerts that should actually be triggered each time VizAlerts runs? Have you tested them using the "test_alert" comment? What do the VizAlerts logs say?

          • 2. Re: VizAlertsConfig operating under an odd Timezone, alerts not going off
            Alexandre Perras
            Alexandre Perras Nov 20, 2017 11:58 AM (in response to Matt Coles)

            Hey Matt,

             

            Thanks for your answer.

             

            The VizAlerts task is set to run every minute, as suggested in the setup guide.

            The test alerts I set up are "simple alerts", my understanding is that they should trigger as long as there is something visible in the view.

            I have tested them using the test_alert comment & running the task, it worked.

            There isn't much to say about the logs I don't think, it gets its trusted ticket, gets the vizdata but in the end says "Processing a total of 0 alerts".

            • 3. Re: VizAlertsConfig operating under an odd Timezone, alerts not going off
              Matt Coles
              Matt Coles Employee Nov 20, 2017 12:22 PM (in response to Alexandre Perras)

              OK, thanks. So, a few possibilities:

               

              1. The task is actually failing, but when you run the exe manually, it is succeeding (for permission reasons, or something else). You can verify this by checking the last timestamps on the log file. Don't run the exe manually for a few minutes. Are the last lines within the last minute? If so, this isn't the problem...

               

              2. VizAlerts doesn't think there is anything to do just yet. It is reaching out and grabbing the data from your VizAlertsConfig workbook sheet, and there are no rows in it. That's not likely since your screenshot shows at least three. But, double check by looking in the \temp folder for the latest CSV, and open it to make sure there's something there. Sometimes I've re-published the workbook and forgotten to update the config file, so VizAlerts was looking at the old one, and not the new one. Stranger things have happened! But if there are rows in it, move on to...

               

              3. VizAlerts is seeing the alerts to process, but it doesn't think it's time to run them just yet. This seems sort of unlikely seeing as how you said that running the exe manually does pick up the alerts and process them as expected. But, this could be the case if you only meant that you were using the comment approach, then running the exe manually. One issue that has come up before is that the schedules might be created with time ranges that cause the alerts never to run. So you may want to double-check the way you configured your VizAlerts schedules. Are they running from 11pm to 12am? Or 12am to 11pm?

               

               

              Let me know if any of that helps!

              • 4. Re: VizAlertsConfig operating under an odd Timezone, alerts not going off
                Matt Coles
                Matt Coles Employee Jul 3, 2018 7:34 AM (in response to Alexandre Perras)

                Hi Alexandre. Did that resolve your issue? If so, would you mark my answer as correct, please?

                 

                thanks!

                Matt