Unified alert reporting

We've been preparing and working on this change for a while, and it's almost time to unify the two separate alert reports available in xMatters into a single, multi-purpose interface: the Alerts report!

Recent Alerts vs All Alerts — why choose?

The Recent Alerts report (formerly known as the Recent Events report) allowed users to review and search through active and recently ended alerts. Data retention was usually limited to about 30 days, though this could depend on your licensing agreement. 

The All Alerts report (formerly All Events) was introduced as part of our extended data retention capabilities and allowed users, mainly administrators, to review and analyze historical data — it did not include active alerts or current runtime data. While it provided a window into past alerts, it also retained data for a much longer period of time, depending on your pricing plan.

Both of these reports served a vital and important purpose, but they were accessed from different areas of the web user interface, required admins to maintain separate sets of permissions, and it often wasn't immediately clear which report was the best option to satisfy a particular query or requirement. 

By consolidating both recent alerts data and historical data in the same report, users can go to one place to find all their alert data.

Less back and forth

The Recent Alerts and All Alerts report contained different data... well, sort of. Sometimes the same data was available in both reports, but in slightly different formats. At other times, it was possible for one report to include information about the same alert that wasn't available in the other report. 

With different and overlapping data available in separate places, some users found that they had to query both reports simultaneously, or bounce back and forth between the reports to find the data they needed.  But, with report unification, we can create a one-stop shop for anyone to see all available alert data at once. 

More features, faster

Due to the age of the Recent Alerts report, it would have been much harder to update it to include many of the features that customers have asked to see. The All Alerts report, by contrast, was designed right from the start to incorporate multiple enhancements and to be easier for us to continue to build in more functionality.

How and when?

The most important aspect of this change is, of course, protecting and preserving your alert data. So this change will not have any impact on your ability to access your data or on your current retention levels. We are only adjusting the way the data is surfaced through the web user interface.

We also want this change to be as seamless as possible, so the Alerts report will be available from the same place in the web user interface that the Recent Alerts report was — as the very first option on the Reports menu.

As for when this is happening, we're just putting the final touches on the consolidation, and planning to release the new Alerts report (and retire the Recent Alerts report for good) on the following dates:

• Early Access Program: April
• Non-production & Production: Pole Position Quarterly Release (June/July)

Please note that these dates are still subject to change; follow this article to stay apprised of any adjustments or updates to this schedule.

Happy reporting!