Receive and respond to notifications
Once you have configured and validated your devices, and your group supervisor or administrator has created groups, teams, and schedules, you are ready to receive notifications.
A notification is any message the system sends to a device to inform you that an alert requires your attention. Notifications include information about an alert, such as the time and location that an event or problem occurred. Some notifications ask you to respond — for example, to acknowledge that you have received the notification, take ownership of the issue, or run an automated remediation flow.
Depending on the situation and the device, the notification might require you to provide a more detailed response, such as:
- OK – I’ll be there in 10 minutes.
- OK – I’ll be there in 30 minutes.
- I cannot respond to this situation.
xMatters administrators (or other users with the appropriate permissions) determine the response options available for each alert.
If you're using the web user interface, the icon at the top of the page lets you quickly see if you have any active alerts. Click on the icon to open your inbox.
The number of active alerts is updated every 5 minutes.
Understand how xMatters handles duplicate notifications
Unless a group is configured to Allow Duplicates, xMatters removes (or suppresses or 'de-duplicates') multiple notifications for a single alert that are targeted at the same user within a group. For example, assume that UserZ is a member of GroupA and GroupB, and GroupB is a member of GroupA. As a result, notifications that target GroupA will target UserZ twice: once as a member of GroupA, and again as a member of GroupB. However, xMatters includes logic that de-duplicates the additional notification and UserZ will be notified only once, unless there is a delay or escalation between the two notifications.
While the latter is true for nested groups with common users, the situation is different when a user is also targeted individually (i.e., not as part of a group). For example, assume that UserZ is a member of GroupC, and that a notification targets GroupC as well as UserZ separately. In this case, UserZ will receive two notifications: one as a member of GroupC, and one as an individually-targeted user.
xMatters also suppresses duplicate subscription notifications. For example, if you're targeted directly as a recipient for an alert, any duplicate messages you would have received via a subscription are suppressed. If you have multiple subscriptions that would send you notifications about the same alert (which is really not a good idea anyway), you'll receive only one notification for the alert. For more information about how xMatters handles subscription notifications, see How to use subscriptions.