Arguably one of the core so important features of prtg is its ability to notify users of alert conditions. While there are some excellent elements of the prtg notification system (redundant email server settings, excellent push notifications via prtg app, SMS integration and third-party notification services integration , editable templates), there are some major issues that need to be improved. The elements of the notification system that involve the actual sending out of the notifications are just about perfect, however just as important are the triggers and configurations of when notifications should be sent. Having used (and loving) prtg since the early 2000s, I can say it seems that the system for configuring and setup of notifications has changed/improved little in this time and really needs some improvements (or an full overhaul).
Some examples of urgently needed improvements as of current, v18 (#1 is the most important):
1- Either the ability to add notifications based on (sensor/device) TAG (ie xyz notification settings only gets applied to sensors tagged "ourPings") , or the ability to configure notifications in the management tab (ie multi sensors / device select, then edit notifications for that selection) . ( the goal of both being to quickly add common notification settings for many devices instead of one at a time or being restricted to an entire group ) .
2- Grouping of notifications (at device or group level) - ie, wait for X or more sensors to be down per device, before triggering a notification, (or wait for all sensors of a device to be in down state before notify).
3- better handling of sensors with longer intervals (ie sensors with 5 or 10min intervals) with "Timespan for Summarizing" type setting (currently you will get 2x or more DOWN and UP notifications if you have sensors with mixed intervals)
4- editable templates for prtg summarized notifications.
5- For sensors at the group level, the option to choose a sensor type per notification. This could be as simple as being able to set the units on a threshold type notification ( for example if you set a notification to alert me above 300 *milliseconds*, this would clearly only apply to your ping sensors, or if you set a threshold for notify below 500 *megabytes* this would only apply to megabyte based sensors. Currently you can only put in a number value so, for example, a threshold sensor set to "above 300" could be triggered for Ping sensors, SNMP, memory Etc , as numbers are universal , units of measurement are specific.
A scenario where this is needed- often devices will contain many different sensor types such as ping + SNMP + VMware soap/WMI. Each sensor type has unique notification needs / settings- currently one has to set these different notifications , individually , on a per sensor level (ie one sensor at a time). This makes expanding/adding new devices , or the initial notification configuration of a large setup unnecessarily time-consuming and difficult.
I'm posting this here to get other feedback from prtg users and prtg staff (ie, maybe i'm wrong on this, and our needs in this regard are unique) , so please lmk if i need to email support or other email to get this post noticed by prtg management or developers (or if they will see this wo further action). Thank you.
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