Notifications

Overview

This chapter sets up email: the SMTP connection, which emails PI Nexus+ sends, and who receives them. Email types, defaults and delivery timings are in the Notifications Reference.

An email reaches a recipient only when three things are true: delivery is enabled, its rule is switched on under Delivery Rules, and the recipient has its email type ticked.

Connect to the mail server

You need an SMTP relay that accepts mail from the web server and the scanner server, and a sender address.

1. Open Admin > Notifications, tab Connection.
2. Enter SMTP Host, Port and Security (Use SSL/TLS), From Address and optionally From Name. Enter Username and Password only if the relay needs a sign-in; leave Password blank to keep the saved one.
3. Enter your own address under Test recipient, choose Save & send test and check that the email arrives.
4. Choose Enable delivery, then Save.

Pause delivery stops all emails without losing the settings.

Choose which emails are sent

1. Under Manual scan completion, tick the outcomes that send an email: Succeeded, Failed (also used for completed with errors), Canceled, Skipped.
2. Under Operational health, tick Enable, then choose New issues, Severity escalations and Recoveries after an alert.
3. Choose the Minimum severity: Warnings and errors or Errors only.
4. Tick Automatic monitoring failures to be told when automatic scan work fails. It works on its own, without Enable and regardless of the minimum severity.
5. Switch on the other groups you use: Auto Tune, Analysis recalculation (New recalculation suggestions), PI Interface runtime, PI Adapter runtime and Host monitoring. For host emails, see Host Monitoring.
6. Under Manual scan attachments, optionally attach an Issues CSV or Changes CSV to manual scan emails, with the Issue severities and Max CSV size (MB).
7. Choose Save.

Health issue emails start quietly: the first completed scan after switching them on sets a baseline, so only later changes are mailed. Automatic scans never send a completion email; failed automatic work is reported by Automatic monitoring failures once its retries are used up.

Add recipients

1. On the Recipients tab, choose Add recipient.
2. Enter the Email Address and optionally a Display Name.
3. Under Sites (shown once two or more sites exist), choose All sites or Selected sites and tick the sites.
4. Under Emails, tick the email types this recipient should receive. All are ticked except Host monitoring escalations, which makes the recipient an escalation recipient.
5. Choose Add recipient.

Prefer team mailboxes to personal addresses.

Emails per site

With sites, every email is split by site. A recipient with Selected sites receives only the items of its sites, and nothing when no item concerns them. Items whose site is unknown, and all Auto Tune emails, go to All sites recipients only. Recipients never see the addresses of recipients with another scope.

When you delete a site, it is removed from recipients. A recipient whose only site was deleted is disabled; to enable it again, edit it and choose All sites or Selected sites first.

Delivery problems

If the mail server is unreachable or answers with a temporary error, PI Nexus+ keeps retrying for up to 24 hours. Failed deliveries are reported under Admin > Support > Readiness. Confirmation delays and repeat rules for runtime alerts are in Delivery and retries in the Reference.

Reference: Notifications Reference