Martello BLOG : Mitel Performance Analytics

Feature of the Week: Schedulable Maintenance Mode

When managing your network, there are many times when a device is in need of an upgrade or replacement. When this happens, you set it to maintenance mode to avoid the irrelevant alarms you know will come in. Things get busy and often, you forget to turn the maintenance mode off – as a result, the key performance indicators are not collected. To prevent this problem, the latest release of Mitel Performance Analytics (MPA) includes a schedulable maintenance mode feature.This will reduce time consuming problems associated with scheduled and unscheduled maintenance and explaining irrelevant alarms or availability details to customers.
MPA makes it effortless to schedule single or groups of devices into maintenance mode. Using group scheduling, this feature simplifies bulk device maintenance and ensure devices come out of maintenance mode when done. Reports are readily available to show maintenance windows during the period.

Additionally, you can schedule multiple maintenance windows associated to a single device. A device can also be included in a daily maintenance schedule and a monthly maintenance schedule. It is also now possible to manually put individual devices into maintenance mode when needed.

For example, as a network specialist, you are responsible for planning and managing maintenance periods for your company’s devices. With this feature, you can rest easy knowing the devices are placed into and out of maintenance at a pre-determined time.

MPA 2.3 gives the users the flexibility to schedule maintenance mode according to any existing workflow. To see more MPA 2.3 features, take a look at our MPA 2.3 primer or the MPA 2.3 demo video.

Feature of the Week: Flexible Alerting

We have already discussed how Mitel Performance Analytics (MPA) R2.3 extends flexibility when it comes to which alarms and alerts users receive, with filtering by severity or other criteria. Today’s Feature of the Week looks at the latest improvements in how you receive these alerts. As users of MPA are aware, the system sends an alert notification to warn IT admins when a network performance problem has occurred, and alerts can be sent by email, desktop notification, SMS, Twitter Direct Message and SNMP trap. Designed to ensure MPA fits flexibly into your existing workflow, Flexible Alerting allows you to customize the content in your alerts, using templates.

MPA R2.3 allows you to create your own email alert notifications with a customizable email template that can be sent to you via text or HTML. Subject lines and email messages are easily adjustable to emphasize the most important content and remove unneeded content. Users can select the email template to best fit their existing business practices or 3^rd party systems.

For instance, one of our customers uses flexible alerting to customize their email alert content by integrating MPA with their existing ticketing system to effectively issue a customer’s ticket. This way, the network problems are seamlessly streamlined to their ticketing system for quick problem resolution. HTML code can also be used to improve the visual aesthetic and overall user experience of notification emails.

With MPA R2.3’s flexible alerting, you can effectively customize your email alert notifications to highlight critical problems, allowing users to quickly action the right alarms at the right time. To learn more about how network monitoring tools can integrate with a customer’s existing business practices, check out our MPA R2.3 Primer or the MPA R2.3 demo video.

Feature of the Week: Custom Alarm Filter

Tools that integrate easily with your existing workflow and IT operations make network monitoring easier. That’s the key principle behind our next set of Mitel Performance Analytics (MPA) R2.3 capabilities in our Feature of the Week Series. We look at Custom Alarm Filters which give you more flexibility than ever when it comes to seeing only the alarms that matter to you.

Best Practice: Multiple Alert Notifications

Alert profiles allow you to configure MPA so it provides notification for certain types of alarms. Notifications can be sent via email, to a desktop, SMS, Twitter Direct Message, or by a SNMP trap.

A best practice for managing network performance effectively is using multiple notification formats for a single alarm. You can set up an alert profile so you are notified by email for all major and critical alarms during working hours and by SMS for critical alarms only after working hours.

Alarm Filtering in MPA R2.3

In the latest release, MPA gives users even greater flexibility and control over the types of alerts they receive, with custom alarms set to filter for severity, content or device type.
The alarm filter criteria include:

• Alarm text contains/doesn’t contain specified keyword
• Alarm has specified severity
• Alarm has specified label
• Alarm was raised about one or more selected device types.

This capability makes it easy for IT admins to manage service level commitments to different customers, by filtering through the data to alert you to only what is most important. For instance, you can customize your dashboard to display only 24/7 customer alarms at night or set only major alarms to be sent according to SLA level. Custom alarm filters ensure you receive alerts more effectively so that you can action the right alarms at the right time.
MPA R2.3 helps you pinpoint the issues that are most critical to your customers, for fast resolution and the prevention of downtime. For more features that integrate network monitoring into a customer’s existing operations workflow, take a look at our MPA 2.3 Primer or the MPA 2.3 Demo Video.