Heartbeat + Alerts to a single email address

[JF Robichaud]

We use Veeam Agent for Windows for backup tasks. The software supports email notifications on successes and errors, but only to one email.

In order to reduce alert bloat we've been trying to use heartbeats for success notifications throughout out infrastructure, so far we've been successful when the tool supports different email addresses for success or error.

Not so when the success and errors can only be sent to one email, we don't want to refresh the heartbeat on error, we want an alert.

Are there any ways to do this in Opsgenie?

We've considered setting a specific email integration to auto-close the success alerts and let the error follow escalation, but doing so we wouldn't be notified if for some reasons the tool stops sending email all together (no success)

Perhaps we could configure the success to escalate to an heartbeat, but that seems like a pretty hard thing to maintain in the long run.

Any thoughts? Much appreciated!

[Nick H · Accepted solution]

Hi @JF Robichaud ,

I think what you want is an Email Integration instead of a Heartbeat.

Heartbeats are a feature unique to Opsgenie that help monitor the connectivity between Opsgenie and your external systems. When Opsgenie does not receive a "ping" aka an email, an alert will be created. But with your case, it sounds like emails are sent regardless whether they are successful or errors.

Heartbeats cannot filter on the subject/fields, or type of emails. They simply monitor whether a ping/email is received or not. That's where an Email Integration will benefit your use case.

Within an Email Integration, you can filter on the types of emails that will (or will not) create Opsgenie alerts. Under the Integration's Advanced tab >> Create Alert actions >> filter on the data received that will create alerts.

Your filter might look something like this:

Hope this helps! Let us know if you have any other questions. 

[JF Robichaud]

@Nick Hyes I'm familiar with the create alert actions. It would work to create alerts on failure and ignore the success notification.

However, I couldn't find a good way to combine that with the heartbeat functionalities in order to make sure that the tool sending notifications is actually sending success (aka the heartbeat).

We are looking at being alerting on failure (can do) and also be alerted in the absence of a signal after X period of time (missed heartbeat).

I wasn't able to find a flow that would achieve this and wondering if I might have overlooked some advanced flow (such as close and ping heartbeat on success?)

[Nick H]

For that use case, you'd need a combination of an Email Integration and a Heartbeat.

The Email Integration would handle creating alerts for the error emails, while the Heartbeat would create alerts if no emails/notifications are received by Opsgenie. 

The Heartbeat would remain active as long as notifications are being received - regardless of success or error notifications. It would expire / create an alert if no notifications are received.

[JF Robichaud]

Ah! I suppose I could configure the tool to send everything to two emails addresses (x@...opsgenie.net + x@....heartbeat.opsgenie.com) and handle it that way yes!

I was way overthinking this!

Thanks @Nick H