Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA)

Automatically pause notifications for transient alerts, giving time for them to auto-resolve before notifying responders.

The Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA) feature will detect alerts that typically auto-resolve within a short time period and it will temporarily pause notifications for such transient alerts.

During the pause period, new alerts will be viewable on the Incident List page in the Suppressed state with an icon to indicate transitoriness (refer to screenshot below). Users can choose to trigger these suppressed alerts during the pause period if these alerts are actually actionable. If a suppressed alert does not auto-resolve within the configured pause time period, APTA will trigger an incident and notify responders as per set Escalation Policies.

Note: This feature will be available for accounts in the Enterprise plan.

What do we mean by transient alerts?

For Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA), a transient alert is an alert that typically auto-resolves via the configured alert source integration within a short time period of time from its trigger.

Important: Alerts that receive a resolve action made manually by a responder will not be classified as transient.

How are alerts determined to be transient?

Data science techniques assess the frequency of similar alerts demonstrating transient behavior in the past. If an alert is frequently classified as transient, the Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA) system will suspend alert notifications for the pause period set for that given Service.

Understanding the feedback mechanism

With Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA), users are not only benefiting from the reduced alert noise coming from transient alerts but are also being given the ability to make the feature more efficient by capturing feedback.

Users can give two types of feedback to Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA):

1. Letting Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA) know that a certain alert type needs to be flagged as transient going forward.

   • When a triggered alert is not flagged as transient, but it should have been, users can explicitly let the system know by clicking the Mark Transient action button on the Details page.

     

     Image. Marking an Incident as transient

     

     Image. Confirm action
   • Once marked, this particular alert will not be considered as transient immediately. This is just to inform the system that future occurrences of similar alerts to this one must be flagged as transient.

2. Letting Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA) know that what was flagged as a transient alert is actually not transient.

   • This feedback is given to the system when the user clicks the Not Transient action button on the Details page of a transient alert.

   

   Image. Marking an Incident as not-transient

   

   Image. Confirm action

   • This feedback does 2 things:

     1. Instantly triggers an incident by moving the state from Suppressed to Triggered and the default Escalation Policy or specific Routing Rule targets of the affected Service is executed, notifying responders.

     2. Additionally, feedback is also sent to the Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA) system to not consider similar instances of this alert in the future as transient.

Note: The feedback provided by the users to the Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA) system may take some time (also means repeated feedback in some cases) to be fully effective.

Enabling Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA) for a Service

While creating a new Service

1. Navigate to the Services tab where you can start creating a new Service. Among other details given as inputs necessary for creating the Service, enable the toggle for Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA).

2. Next, choose a Timeout Window. This is the time window (in minutes) for which an alert flagged as transient will remain in the Suppressed state. You can choose to proceed with the recommended time window or make a custom selection. The system recommends this time window based on the median TTR of past auto-resolved incidents for the Service. Such an alert can either be:

   1. Auto-resolved by the alert source integration within the time window, moving the alert to the Resolved state.

   2. Be triggered as an incident and moved to the Triggered state notifying responders if it was not auto-resolved by the alert source integration within the time window.

3. By clicking Save and Continue, you can proceed with Service creation which will result in immediate enablement of Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA).

Image. Enable APTA while creating a new service

For an existing Service

1. Navigate to the Services tab -> For the selected Service, click the More action and select Edit Service.

Image. Edit Service Details

2. Here, you can enable the toggle for Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA).

3. Next, choose a Timeout Window. This is the time window (in minutes) for which an alert flagged as transient will remain in the Suppressed state. You can choose to proceed with the recommended time window or make a custom selection.

Image. Enable APTA for an existing service

Note: Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA) system uses heuristics to recommend the most suitable pause time window for the Service by looking at historical alerts that may have been transient in nature in the past.

Disabling Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA) for a Service

1. Navigate to the Services tab -> For the selected Service, click the More action and select Edit Service.

Image. Edit Service details

2. Here, you can disable the toggle for Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA). Doing so will immediately stop the system from being active, which means users can expect a high number of alert notifications reaching them (which would have not been the case previously).

FAQs

Do we need to create a new Service to enable this feature?

No, that would not be necessary. Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA) can be enabled (and disabled) for any (existing / new) Service at any point in time.

I am unable to view the “Mark Transient” action button for my triggered alert. What am I missing?

This happens when Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA) is not enabled for the Service for which the triggered alert has come in for. Squadcast checks for feature enablement while displaying allowed actions for an alert. You can simply head over to the Service details page and into the edit flow to enable this. Once done, you will be able to view the “Mark Transient” action button for the triggered alert.

All the feedback that is given by users for incidents for Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA), is there a log for us to view at a later point in time?

Any feedback action by the users or even marking of an alert as transient, the alert is triggered by the system after the pause period if not auto-resolved, etc. will be captured within the Activity Timeline for that alert in real-time. Users can always view the Activity Timeline at any point in time to go through the logs.

Logs for Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA) in the alert Activity Timeline would include:

1. When alert is flagged as transient by Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA).

2. When a user gives feedback to consider a future occurrence of the alert as transient by Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA).

3. When a user gives feedback to not consider a future occurrence of the transient alert as transient by Auto Pause Transient Alerts (APTA).

4. When the transient alert is auto-resolved by the alert source integration.

5. Auto Pause Timeout Breach: When the transient alert completes the pause period and is not auto-resolved by the alert source integration and Squadcast triggers an incident and sends out notifications.

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