Create an alarm

Use the Create Alarm form to add a new rule that monitors your devices or data streams and notifies you when a condition is met. The form is designed to be approachable — fill in the human-friendly fields and the app will guide you through the important options.

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What you’ll see on the form

• Alarm Name: A short, descriptive name that helps you and your team understand what this rule monitors.
• Description: A longer, optional note describing the purpose of the alarm and suggested actions when it fires.
• Alarm Type: Choose between a Single Metric alarm (watch a single value across devices) or a Group Comparison (compare values between two groups of devices).

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Build the query (what to watch)

The form asks for a few pieces to identify the data the alarm should watch:

• Topic Pattern: The stream or topic pattern the rule looks at (the app may suggest common patterns).
• Schema and Field: Select the data schema and the specific field you want to evaluate (for example “temperature”).
• Tags (optional): Add tags to limit the scope further (useful when you have many data series under the same topic pattern).

Use the preview or summary shown on the form to confirm you’re watching the right data.

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Filters (target specific devices)

If you don’t want the alarm to run for every device, add device metadata filters. These let you target only devices with certain properties — for example, a specific model, location, or customer.

• For Single Metric alarms: add a single metadata filter that all matched devices must satisfy.
• For Group Comparison alarms: define filters for Group A and Group B so the system can compare the two sets.

If you leave filters empty the rule applies to all devices matching the topic pattern.

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Condition (when should it fire)

Set the condition that will trigger the alarm:

• Evaluation Method: Choose whether the alarm looks at the latest single value or an aggregation (average, sum, min, max) across a time window.
• Evaluation Window: When using aggregated methods, set how long the system should look back (e.g., 5 minutes).
• Trigger Condition: Select greater-than, less-than, or percentage-based comparisons (for group comparisons).
• Threshold: The numeric value that will cause the alarm to trigger when the condition is met.

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Settings

• Check Interval: How often the rule is evaluated (for example every 60 seconds). Shorter intervals give faster detection but may increase load.
• Enable toggle: Decide whether the alarm should be active immediately after saving.

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Save and cancel

Use the Save button to create the alarm. If a required field is missing the app will highlight it and prompt you to complete the form. Use Cancel to close the form without saving changes.

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Practical tips

• Name alarms clearly and include a description with recommended next steps (who to contact, where to check, etc.).
• Start with conservative thresholds and test a rule in a limited scope before enabling it fleet-wide.
• Use metadata filters to reduce noise and focus on meaningful groupings of devices.

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