How do I determine the alert trigger?

Setting a good alert hinges on finding the right message trigger. When this threshold is reached, the alert is triggered. In this article, we give you a few tips on how to find a good trigger. 

Getting started

When setting the trigger, there are two options to initially choose from. Both refer to # of messages per hour. 

• If any filter in the case reaches the trigger (non-specific)
• Other→ Here you can set the trigger per filter (specific)

Setting a threshold per filter usually yields more accurate results because it allows for more specificity. But setting a trigger on any filter is useful in certain instances, such as when there is only 1 filter in the case, or if each filter is very similar in terms of how the volume of messages. 

However, when the results greatly differ per filter, the 'Other' option is recommended. 

Determining the trigger on any filter

When performing these steps, it's important that you already have collected messages for at least 4 days, although the longer, the better. 

1. Make sure that the case you want to set an alert for has already collected messages for at least 4 days
2. Set the time period to approximately 3/4 days 
3. Open the timeline widget
4. Check if each peak on the timeline has an interval of 1 hour. You can do this by hovering over the peak and noting the timeframe. If every peak (not valley) is exactly rounded off to an hour, then you have set the time period correctly. 
5. Look for the highest peak on the timeline and write down how many messages were collected at the highest peak.

An example is shown below:

In this example, we see that 17 messages were collected during on 15 August at 4 PM. Depending on how sensitive you want the alert to be, you can set the trigger at a little below or above the number of messages. 

Determining the trigger on a specific filter

The steps are almost the same, except you first select the filter you want to set a trigger for. 

1. Set the time period to approximately 4 days 
2. Open the timeline widget
3. Select the filter you want to set a trigger for
4. Look for the highest peak on the timeline and write down the number of messages collected in that hour. 
5. Select the next filter and repeat step 4. 

Note: It's important to keep refining the alert trigger if you feel that it is not sensitive enough (too few relevant alerts returned) or too sensitive (too many false alerts returned).

 Since the above steps only look at one moment of 4 days in time, you can adjust these steps over several timeframes to find the most accurate trigger number.