SIGNL4 helps to reliably alert service technicians in facility management, no matter where they are located.
May 2022 Update – Templates, scheduler enhancements, landline numbers, and more
Our May update brings Signl templates for manual alerting, improvements for duty scheduling and various enhancements in the web portal. Another new feature is the possibility to notify through calling landline numbers. All details can be found in this blog article. Templates for manual Signls Manual Signls now comes with templates. Templates can be created
April 2022 Update – Signl categories and duty scheduler improvements
With our April update, we ship some great improvements for Signl categories, category-based alerting and duty scheduling. All details are available in this blog article. Enhanced category matching Category matching can now also be based on text fragments (“keywords”) that must NOT be included in the event payload. Meaning, we’ve added a logical ‘NOT’ operator
Heartbeat check and more – is your monitoring still alive?
SIGNL4 is a cloud-based mobile alerting and incident response service. Third-party systems like monitoring tools, control systems or IoT sensors detect abnormalities and transmit events to SIGNL4 over the Internet. What if your systems cannot transmit critical events anymore? That might happen when the Internet is down or when the tool itself has a problem.
Feature Update: Enhanced security for call routing
Our interim update from March 15 adds important security features to call forwarding to on-callers. Three new settings have been added for call routing numbers: PIN Allow callers Block callers PIN From now on you can assign a PIN to a phone number. A caller must then enter this PIN to be connected to the
February 2022 Update – Centralized and time-based notification patterns
With our February update, it is now possible to centrally configure how Signls should be notified. And of course, each team can have a different configuration of their notification preferences. This also includes response and escalation settings. In addition, it is now possible to set different notification patterns per day and time of the day,
Integration Options with SIGNL4
SIGNL4 integrates with various backend systems like IT monitoring, service management, IoT systems, sensors, etc. to automatically alert users and teams about certain incidents. A list of selected tools along with integration descriptions is available in our integrations section. How can you integrate SIGNL4 with your own tools? Find an overview of the various options offering
Scheduling Managers on Duty for Alert Escalation
A question we are hearing often is related to manager escalations, a heavily utilized feature in SIGNL4. Users ask us if those managers can be scheduled. The short answer is ‘yes’, but you need to use a different feature in SIGNL4 and do a little re-configuration. By November 21 we’ve introduced team escalations (see here)
How to get support?
This post provides an overview on the variety of options and to contact us, if you are seeking technical or other support from the SIGNL4 team. Though, SIGNL4 is designed as a self-service platform and provides an abundance of resources and help, we ‘human’ provide help through our agents whenever needed. Self-Service Let’s first have
December 2021 Update – On-duty board, Manual Signls and Azure Sentinel update
Our December update brings a ‘Who is on duty’ board displaying current team members on duty with contact information. In addition, we have simplified the manual sending of Signls and improved the integration with Azure Sentinel. As always, you can find all the details in this article. Who is on duty? We now answer this
A vital alerting solution
This article should give you a first idea of what SIGNL4 does. What do IT security, production monitoring and technical field service have in common? In all these scenarios, the right people need to get notified immediately – in case of technical malfunctions, urgent maintenance orders or emergencies, all in order to solve any incident
Mobile Service Dispatching for In Plant Transport Logistics at BASF Coatings
„SIGNL4, is a highly intuitive seamless mobile control system for intra-logistics processes. We were looking for an attractive visualization that enables a smooth change management within the teams. Changing process is always a challenge but the greatest sceptics soon became the greatest fans of SIGNL4.” Victor Kaupe, Project Management Logistics EMEA, BASF Coatings Challenge BASF
Publish SIGNL4 oncall and alert information to your Grafana dashboard
Grafana is as open source analytics and interactive visualization application. You can connect different data sources to display chart and graphs or even trigger alerts. Wouldn’t it be great to add information about SIGNL4 alerts or about who is on call as part of your dashboard? In this case you immediately get an overview about
November 2021 Update – Improved incident response with team escalation and more
Our November update introduces new team settings and, along with them, entirely new options for escalating Signls. This will allow you to make your incident response even more reliable. One application is to create a ‘managers on duty’ teams with full duty scheduling capabilities and escalate missed Signls to such 2nd level response team. As
Building Automated Monitoring with Icinga and SIGNL4
How many servers can be managed by one system administrator? This question is not an easy one since it definitely depends on the tasks that need to be operated. However, it´s quite clear that the amount of servers one engineer can manage has increased enormously over time, and is still growing. Yet, public and private
Android App Update: Mute and enhanced ‘Do not disturb’ override
With our latest Android app update (3.1., build 242) you will never miss a critical SIGNL4 alert again. Even if your phone is muted or in do-not-disturb mode, SIGNL4 can now make a lot of ‘noise’ and wake you up reliably when a major or critical incident occurs. Here is how it works…. Mute and
Why Net at Work employees are sleeping soundly
Meet a typical challenge of 24/7 IT operations Net at Work is a German IT company with over 100 employees that provides its customers with solutions and tools for digital communication and collaboration. Their product NoSpamProxy offers reliable protection against spam and ransomware, legally compliant email encryption and more. Customers of Net at Work are
September 2021 Update: Routing voice calls to on-call staff
Yippie! Our September update adds live call routing as well as a voice mailbox with notification feature to SIGNL4. All details can be found in this article. The scenario The typical scenario for call routing is to offer a hotline for partners, clients or staff and then route incoming calls automatically to the person on
Automatic Alert Export to Third-Party Systems
In the SIGNL4 web portal you can manually export historic alert reports as .csv files. In some cases it might be useful to export alert data programmatically. For example you can forward all alerts including specific parameters to InfluxDB and show the alert history in Grafana to recognize peaks, trends and abnormalities over time. You
Thank you for your fantastic reviews of our mobile alerting app!
We would like to thank our loyal customers for the numerous reviews of SIGNL4! We are excited that you share your opinion on various rating platforms with other people and support us. Why we work with G2Crowd and Capterra G2Crowd is the largest B2B marketplace for software in the world, where you can already find
July 2021 Update: Users can be members of multiple teams
The time has come! Users in SIGNL4 can now be a member of multiple teams. This allows for staff to be on duty in multiple groups or departments in parallel and to receive related alert notifications for incidents that occur in the different teams. In addition, you can now also send Signls to multiple teams.
Duty Schedule Import from Third-Party Systems
SIGNL4 helps to reliably alert service technicians in facility management, no matter where they are located.
5 typical mistakes in alerting and how to avoid them
A good alerting strategy is an important prerequisite for successful operations management and the availability of mission-critical systems. But also for employee satisfaction. It’s not just about sending out alerts upon critical conditions, problems and failures at all, but more importantly, about how it is done. Here are the 5 most typical mistakes, their consequences
Alerting of Service Technicians in Facility Management
SIGNL4 helps to reliably alert service technicians in facility management, no matter where they are located.
Three fundamental tips for an effective event filtering in SIGNL4
Event and alert filtering matters because alert fatigue is one of the most crucial issues in alerting and alert management. SIGNL4 implements a lightweight and effective way of filtering events. The overall process is based on alert categories. Alert categories are applied using a keyword search across the entire payload of incoming third-party events. But
Adding Rich Content to Alerts, Work Orders or Service Requests
When you send alerts, work orders or service requests to your workers in the field, on the shop floor or campus it is essential to provide them with all relevant information necessary to solve the task. This prevents misunderstandings, avoids waste work, time for searching information and thus increases productivity and facilities an effective, timely
February 2021 Update: Copy duty slots, password change and 2-way integration with ServiceNow and Checkmk
With our February 2021 update, we have added more features to our account management portal. We’ve now added a copy mode to the duty and shift calendar providing an even better shift and duty scheduling experience. You can now also monitor your personal profile and change your password in the account portal. We have now
2-way integration with ConnectWise Manage
SIGNL4 now includes a new app for connecting to ConnectWise Manage (“Manage”). This makes 2-way integration with Manage a breeze, and responding to service desk tickets can now be done conveniently via mobile app in SIGNL4. This blog article has all the important details. What features does the integration offer? The integration offers the following
Segment and SIGNL4: Know your Customer’s Actions, Anywhere and Anytime
You have a web site, app, online shop, or SaaS offering? Then you have plenty of user actions. That can be visiting a certain page, signing up for a service or canceling a subscription. Wouldn’t it be great to know in real time when an important customer action takes place? This would allow you sales,
December 2020 Update: Multiple teams, new user management and enterprise licensing
Our December update lets it rip once again: From now on, you can create and manage multiple teams in your SIGNL4 subscription. For this purpose, we have also added a new user role and enhanced our web app. This makes it much easier to centrally manage multiple departments in your organization. Creating, setting up and
October 2020 Update: Mute overwrite for iPhone (Critical Alerts), undo and more
Our October update brings the long-awaited mute-overwrite on iPhone (‘critical alerts’). We also introduce an undo action for Signl acknowledgements or closures. And in the web app you can now batch-ack and close to multiple Signls at once. All new features are introduced below – enjoy. Mute-overwrite on iPhones (Critical Alerts) We are delighted to
How SIGNL4 provides for a digital handover procedure
Handover procedures in operations and maintenance are a key element of business continuity. As work in this field is usually organized in shifts, it is essential to keep track of any critical incidents, machine breakdowns, job ownership, completion, issues that are still open or unresolved and other related items. Such knowledge has a significant impact
Why you need to stop the handover of that shared on-call duty phone
If you are still handing over a shared on-call duty phone or pager (sometimes called ‘operations phone’), it is time to rethink your process. The Covid19-induced new normal has a dramatic impact on our work live and social behavior. We work from home and that is especially true for the IT workforce. We meet with
September 2020 Update: All-new Webhook and API Key Management
Our September update provides you with self-service API key management from the SIGNL4 web portal. Finally, you can fully exploit our comprehensive REST API. We also improved management of outbound webhook which can update your systems with any information on Signl handling. API Key Management It is now possible to manage API keys for the
No More False Alerts at Night
Do you know this situation? You are on-call and in the middle of the night you get a phone call. Loud enough to wake you up. Loud enough to wake your wife up, as well. You stand up and check your emails to see what the problem is. OK, you got it. Then you log
How SIGNL4 solves typical problems in network monitoring
A new article in the September issue of German magazine LANLine (“Automation creates productivity”) summarizes typical challenges and problems in network monitoring very well and is worth reading. I would like to briefly discuss some of the problems addressed and how our product SIGNL4 was developed as a solution for exactly these problems. Problem 1:
Website Monitoring with SIGNL4
SIGNL4’s core job is to reliably alert operational teams. However, we’ve been asked a couple of times if SIGNL4 can also monitor a website’s uptime. Well, we developed an app and it is now available in the SIGNL4 app gallery. You can now monitor the availability of websites AND get instantly alerted if it goes
August 2020 Update: Manage service and system categories in the web portal and define responsibilities centrally
Our August update now makes it easy to assign team responsibilities for individual systems through our categories. This is no longer only possible by each team member in the mobile app, but can now also be done centrally in the web portal by the team administrator. All details can be found in this blog article.
July 2020 Update: Close alerts in SIGNL4 when the issue was resolved in the backend
Our July update brings new features to the email and webhook API’s. You can now close alerts in SIGNL4 when the issue was resolved in your backend system. Use Case A typical use case is IT monitoring and auto-recovery. Imagine you get an alert in the middle of the night about an IT issue. A
Press Release: SIGNL4 Now Available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace
Microsoft Azure customers worldwide now gain access to SIGNL4 to take advantage of the scalability, reliability and agility of Azure to drive application development and shape business strategies. Richmond, June 15 2020 Today, Derdack (www.signl4.com), provider of critical alerting for operations teams, announced the availability of SIGNL4 in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, an online store
Business Continuity Planning and Effective Communication – by Laura Toplis
With many companies utilizing remote-working during the COVID-19 pandemic, effective communication is more important than ever. Unfortunately, being in the middle of responding to a global pandemic will not prevent your organization from suffering from other business disruptions. Likely disruptions you may face are: Cyber/ phishing attacks – these attacks can cripple your regular communication
May 2020 Update: Alert management and chat in web portal and upcoming duties in the mobile app
Our May update brings new features to our Signl Center in the web app and adds a new view that displays your upcoming duties to the mobile app! Upcoming Duties Preview When part of an on-call duty team, your private life and work-life-balance are pretty much affected. Knowing about scheduled duties in advance and having
April 2020 Update: Goodbye “I never got that alert” and emergency alerting – the new Signl Center
Our April update is BIG. It introduces emergency alerting to reach you entire team. We hope this will be a bit of humble support to your organization in this Covid-19 crisis. The core of this release is the new signl center, the new place to track alerts and their delivery in real-time, to see incoming
How SIGNL4 supports geolocation and GPS information
SIGNL4 provides great support for geolocation information and in multiple ways. When a new alert with geolocation information is displayed in the mobile app, the app renders a map to visualize geographic information of the incident. A double click allows to open the default map application on the mobile device, e.g. to get directions or
How to create user groups and route alerts
“Servcies&Systems” category subscriptions provide a highly flexible way of routing alerts to specific user groups. This can for instance be used to route alerts based on responsibilities or skills. But other scenarios are possible too as the category subscription mechanism is extremely powerful. First layer of alert routing – duty status SIGNL4 currently provides
Chatbot integration with Microsoft Teams and Slack
SIGNL4 provides plug-and-play chatbot integrations with Microsoft Teams and Slack, both via certified chatbot apps. Why does it makes sense to integrate SIGNL4 with chat tools after all? There are two basic uses cases that we address with the integration into Teams and Slack. Using Teams and Slack as additional notification channels By default,
February 2020 Update: Legacy Pager Support, Scheduler User Role, Improved Duty Report and Microsoft Teams Bot
Our first SIGNL4 release tin 2020 includes some great new features. Have a look: Notify your Legacy Pager For all those who still need to work with pager devices in addition to their smartphone, it is now possible to include this device in the alarm workflow. This might be the case to secure alert delivery
How SIGNL4 supports alert severity
Event and alert severity are extremely important information for an effective alert management and response. Severity information determine the speed of response, needed resource allocation and the action path taken. Naturally, critical alerts have higher priority than major alerts which again overrule minor alerts. However, as monitoring, security and other control systems have different ways
Join our first “Ask me anything” webinar
We are more than excited to host our first ‘ask me anything’ session on SIGNL4. Here is our agenda: You will meet our experts Matt, René and Patrick. Any questions or feature requests can be discussed and answered here. We will give you an update on the latest features additions Get exclusive insights into our
December 2019 Update 2: Alert Counters, Category Subscription, Webhook Format
Our 2nd December update adds alert counters to the web app, allows for disabling the opt-in/out from “Services & Systems” categories and adds a new encoding format to the SIGNL4 webbhook. New webhook payload format The SIGNL4 webhook now also digest payload of ‘application/x-www-form-urlencoded‘ type. A payload/webhook call of this kind would like: POST /webhook/ihdm29y8
December 2019 Update: User roles, App enhancements and Azure Sentinel integration
Our December update includes a new role model for users in a SIGNL4 team, great new app features and integration with Azure Sentinel. Introducing user roles Two default user roles are now available in each SIGNL4 team: Administrator and User. This allows for restricting standard user rights versus administrative access. For existing teams, all users
Advanced alerting and anywhere alert management for Azure Monitor
Have you ever wanted to get important alerts from Azure Monitor notified on your smartphone and have all the important details of the problem at your fingertips? Have you ever missed the option to easily change the status of alerts from Azure Monitor in the Azure smartphone app? Ever missed a push notification because there
Enable SSO and MFA by adding SIGNL4 as an enterprise app in Azure Active Directory
This article describes how SIGNL4 can be generally authorized as an enterprise app for Azure AD users (Marketplace Link). This is important if you want to implement the use of SIGNL4 in your company with existing user accounts from the Azure AD. Attention: Please, also refer to this knowledge base article. Initial situation Using SIGNL4
October 2019 Update: Improved usability and new emergency alarm triggering in the app
The October update of the mobile app includes the improvements described below and the user experience includes a new feature. Simplified handling of categories The user interface of the app has been improved so that you can now decide for yourself if you want to see all Signls on the dashboard differentiated by categories. Using
September 2019 Update: Improved assigning of categories
Our September update improves the assignment of categories to Signl alerts, hence the enrichment and routing of alerts to the right people. New Category Assignment Operator Until now, a ‘Services & Systems’ category was assigned to a Signl alert, if at least one of the entered keywords was found in the event content or text
August 2019 Update: Mobile Alert Dashboard and PSD2 Support
Our August update makes SIGNL4 fit for the new “Payment Services Directive 2”. In addition, we have added extended the mobile alert dashboard and added new metrics. The enhanced dashboard of the SIGNL4 mobile app now shows alert counters per ‘services & systems’ category. Here come the details…. Category Dashboard Metrics When opening the SIGNL4
July 2019 Update: Alert Opt-In and Out, Apps Section and Getting Started
July 2019 Update introduces the option to opt-out for certain categories as well as some enhancements in the Web portal. Manage which alerts you want and how: ‘Services & Systems’ Category Opt-Out You can now opt-in/out of certain categories under Settings -> Services & Systems. This works on a per-user basis and is useful when
Welcome to our Partner Program – SIGNL4Partners
We are super-excited about launching our new referral partner program, SIGNL4Partners. The program is dedicated to solution providers and system integrators just like you. Any company can join the program, no matter if you are an IoT Hardware vendor or specialize in software solutions. Benefits of joining SIGNL4Partners are: 20% revenue share from all registered
May 2019 Update: Response Metrics, Multi-Alert Actions and Web Signup
The May 2019 Update introduces web sign-up and some great, long-awaited mobile app enhancements! Mobile App: Multi-Alert Confirmation and Resolution We have added the capability to confirm and resolve multiple alert signls at once. Simply tap the new 3-dot-button on the top right and select “Confirm all” / “Resolve all”. Please keep in mind that these
Unexpected IT downtime costs your business more than you think
IT downtime can effect businesses of all sizes. From online retailers and event promoters to cloud-based service providers and 24/7 security teams, all modern businesses are at risk of facing both monetary and organizational costs that can stack up in a matter of minutes. Users (internal and external) may not be able to access websites
Alert escalation – How it works in SIGNL4
This article explains the simplicity and effectiveness of alert escalation in SIGNL4. The case for alert escalations Part of any managers role is to make sure their team is taking accountability. Managers are not the front lines resolvers that handle issues, that is what they have a team for. However, managers do need to be
SIEM Alerting with SIGNL4
Many businesses of all sizes are now aware of the never-ending security risks that threaten the condition of their IT infrastructure. Larger companies have begun to adopt Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) software solutions to assist in the daily oversight of their IT security. By taking the best elements of Security Event Management (SEM), which
April 2019 Update: Event Filtering
This update introduces an effective mechanism for event filtering to SIGNL4. You can now use the keywords of your ‘services & systems’ categories as a whitelist. If you enable this keyword whitelist, SIGNL4 performs a keyword search across all parameters and content of a received event (e.g. received by email or webhook). It will then
February 2019 Update: Convenient Duty and Shift Scheduling in your Browser
The February 2019 update brings the long anticipated duty and shift scheduling. It further improves SIGNL4’s capabilities of delivering the right information to the right people at the right time. Shift Scheduling Basics Shift scheduling in SIGNL4 is done through the account/team management portal. It works with any browser and provides an enormous flexibility. You
Never Miss After-Hours Customer Calls to Your Service Hotline
An upset customer is calling your service hotline in the middle of night because an important system stopped working. A sleepy engineer, just woken up by that call, somehow tries to answer the bullet-like questions of your customer. The result: unhappiness on both sides. Sounds familiar? Here is what you can do: For an enterprise
Mobile B2B SaaS Success – Q&A with Matthes Derdack
SIGNL4 is a mobile SaaS solution built to address the needs of on-the-go operations teams across many industries. Stemming from German parent company, Derdack, SIGNL4 looks to provide agility and reliability where other solutions on the market may not. Aside from its core strength in persistent mobile team alerting, this application has been developed taking ino account recent trends in software
SIGNL4 Alert and Shift Reports with Microsoft Excel
Though SIGNL4 does not provide canned reports (yet), it allows for downloading all required data of on-call times, alerts and responses. Hence all it takes is an external tool to process and analyse those logs. Shift and alerts logs can be used to review workload of your team members, frequency of certain alert types, hours
December 2018 Update: The magic of Alert Enrichment through Categorization
The update of December 2018 adds great features for enriching Signls with additional information (‘alert enrichment’). With “Services and Systems” categories, SIGNL4 already comes with an unique approach of categorizing alerts through colouring and acoustics, i.e. a dedicated push sound. But why not use this categorization feature for adding information to Signl alerts? Why is
Being a powerful ‘pager app’ SIGNL4 can easily replace a pager
The short answer is: “Yes, SIGNL4 can.” SIGNL4 can be seen as a so-called “pager app” for Android and iPhone. But more than that. Here is the how and why of it. A pager is a small radio receiver. Each pager has a unique code or phone number. All the pagers that are in everyone’s
Smart City – Automatically Dispatch Snow Clearing Teams Upon Weather Alerts
Many cities provide snow clearing services. It is especially important at night to inform teams about snow warnings as snow accumulation can be troublesome for the masses in the morning of the following day. When to expect snow can be found online, but is this form of weather detection reliable enough to mobilize service teams
Setting up the AWS IoT Button – and SIGNL4
The AWS IoT Button is a great IoT device. A simple press of a button turns into unlimited possibilities. And with SIGNL4 you can easily trigger mobile alerts to operations or security teams. Almost in real-time. What is the AWS IoT Button? The AWS IoT Button is the ‘unlinked’ version of the Amazon Dash Button
November 2018 Update: Multi-Team Licensing
The November update introduces central management and licensing of multiple teams. Multiple teams can now be billed through a single account. This eases purchasing and license management for anybody with more than one team on SIGNL4. Additionally, teams can centrally be created, stocked up with user licenses and even deleted. How does it work? The
Query email mailbox (Gmail) with Zapier to trigger SIGNL4 alert notifications
Sometimes you need to query an existing mailbox for specific emails instead of forwarding emails directly to your SIGNL4 team email address. This example uses Zapier to query a Gmail mail account. New emails with specific content then trigger alert notifications through SIGNL4. Zapier is great workflow tool and provides integrations with almost any mailbox type.
The New Norm – How Consumerization Trends Impact the B2B Software Business
Business-to-business, also known as B2B, has not always been recognized as the glamorous side of marketing and sales no matter what industry. This is even more evident when discussing the sale of software and enterprise applications. Previously, this was a rather stale environment, however, in today’s strong-buyer scenario, things have begun to change. Due to the abundance
Real-time mobile alerts for monitoring of dry contacts with Web-IO from Wiesemann & Theis
Machines, pumps, valves, fire alert systems, temperature sensors, smoke detectors, etc. often do not offer IT integration. Instead, they provide simple analog cables to interface with dry contacts. Monitoring these I/O states and detecting abnormal behavior or malfunctions a common scenario in industrial IoT. Operations teams in charge of business and operational continuity need to know
How we view partnership at SIGNL4
Imagine being a child on a playground. You see other children playing tag, climbing, sliding, laughing… and you are digging in the sandbox alone. You are content, but you question if this is the best way to go about your day. Sure, you can go play on the swings for a solid 20 minutes, but that
Google Assistant – Alert and Notify your Response Team
In a previous article we’ve shown how to send alerts to SIGNL4 from Amazon Alexa. It is also possible to do the same using the Google Assistant, either on your mobile device or using your Google Home speaker. Setting it up is easy if you are tech-savvy. You need an Android phone with the Google Assistant,
IoT Platforms are lacking effective Alerting for Mobile Operations Teams
The Internet of Things (IoT) has become an exciting area of work. Businesses are rapidly adapting various IoT products whether they realize it or not. Thanks to the booming development of Internet of Things, users across industries can now easily monitor, trigger, and maintain processes and equipment with a brilliant software and strong networks. The infrastructural pieces
Boost Agility of Shop Floor Teams for Industry 4.0 with Mobile Alerting
*This article was first published on Microsoft’s Manufacturing Industry Blog on July 17, 2018. The fourth industrial revolution, Industry 4.0, is happening today. Recent progress in manufacturing automation requires fewer individuals on a shop floor to do manual work with and at machines. However, those people are now required to respond faster and more effectively
Four Cool IoT Devices Paving the Way for IoT Market Growth
The development and rise of cool, tiny and smart devices of all shapes and functions is the foundation of the Internet of Things (IoT). Many of these mechanisms shared below are relatively small in size, but do not let that fool you. These are powerful products that have been endorsed by many. Today, I will introduce
The Internet of Things is Driving our Future
We live in an age of hyper-connectedness. Specific-function devices are now able to relay information to networks in real-time with ease. To put it simply, we live among the Internet of Things (IoT). In this article, we will dive into what IoT is, where it is headed, and what that means for consumers and businesses in
Mobile Apps, and the Future of Field Service Management and Dispatching
Field service management (FSM) is the business-official way of mentioning all the operational and administrative work that goes into on-location service delivery. In other words, FSM is the juggling act that involves everything from accounting and customer relationship management (CRM) to service dispatching and enterprise resource planning (ERP). One can find FSM in many industries like IT,
Separating Alert Signals from Notification Overload
On our smart phones, we receive an abundance of personal and business push notifications every day. Business and business-critical push notifications are meant to be read, ideally acknowledged, and acted on in an attentive manner. The problem is that people cannot always be contacted effectively with a simple push notification. Today I am going to
June 2018 Update: Team Acknowledgements and Sending of Alerts from a Web Browser
June 2018 update brings two cool features: Acknowledgement of alerts by all team members (on duty) Sending of alerts to the team from a Web Browser Happy exploring! Group alerting with multiple acknowledgements There are multiple models of how many people are required to acknowledge a critical alert. Typical for IT and other areas of maintenance and
Get a mobile alert when your Internet link is down
The app-based alerting service SIGNL4, enables you to send alerts from your corporate infrastructure via e-mail or webhook. Your team will then receive the notifications by push, SMS or phone call. But what if the Internet connection is no longer available and you cannot transmit the alerts to SIGNL4? Below we describe a convenient method
Five SaaS Tools to Optimize Team Productivity
In the digital age, it is extremely helpful to have Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tools in place to maximize team productivity. SaaS tools are great because they take essential work tasks, and slim them down into user-friendly web and mobile applications. Below I have recommended five SaaS tools available online. I selected these as they are applicable
Push, text and voice notifications from Google Forms
SIGNL4 offers easy-to-use interfaces for triggering notifications, e.g. email and Webhook. In some scenarios you might want to send signals manually from a Web portal. Google Forms is one option to add this feature to SIGNL4. The following steps show you how to setup a simple Web form for manually sending signals to your SIGNL4
May 2018 Update: Text and Voice Calls, Geo Location, Flood Protection, AppConfig enhancements
We are incredibly proud to announce the May 2018 update, which adds the following new features to SIGNL4: Persistent alert notifications via text and voice call In-app triggered alerts transmit current geographic location Alerts can be enriched with maps and geolocation Intelligent notification flood protection algorithm (notification suppression) Extended MDM support (MobileIron) for App Config
April 2018 Update: API Enhancements, Duty Length, Countries, Splunk
The April 2018 update adds the following new features to SIGNL4: New methods and method enhancements for the REST API and webhook A new duty & shift length of 14 days Availability in new countries Happy exploring! Outbound webhooks: Correlate alert-status changes and the original event We have addressed requests for better correlation of alert-triggering
Mobile ChatOps built-in
When a critical problem needs attention, advice from peers and experts is often valuable. While a phone call might be the fastest way to communicate, there can be circumstances where it doesn’t work or isn’t appropriate. That is why we built a chat feature into SIGNL4. Mobile ChatOps in SIGNL4 The built-in mobile chat is
Android settings for making SIGNL4 an even better paging app
The problem with push notifications as an alarm channel is that they don’t really alert you when the phone is set to “Do not disturb”. The mobile phone will vibrate only, if at all. Important alarms will be missed. That might turn into a true disaster for critical alerts! So what’s the alternative? You can
February 18 Update: Alert Audit Trail, Management of 3rd Party Apps
The February 2018 update adds the following new features to SIGNL4: CSV alert protocols, e.g. for Excel import and analytics Management of linked third-party applications, e. g. Alexa Skill CSV audit trail log of all alarms and notifications With the help of the CSV audit trail protocols, it is now possible to evaluate how many
Shift Scheduling with StaffHub – Alerting with SIGNL4
We live in a somewhat paradoxical world. Our cars, or those that will soon be automatically brought to us via an Alexa voice command, drive us e. g. independently to the doctor or in front of a furniture store. Once there, however, it is just not possible to read in the chip card for registration
Mobile Business Notifications with Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM
Managers and executives are always interested in current company data and KPIs (“key performance indicators”). This includes information about the current monthly and annual turnover. But also promising customer requests (A leads) that may require the collaboration of several departments. And of course also critical technical incidents at customers who need a quick solution to ensure
Amazon Alexa – Send Alerts and Notify your Response Team
With Amazon Alexa, the Internet giant, Amazon, has quickly established itself as a leading company in the field of digital assistants with speech recognition. We here at Derdack SIGNL4 believe that speech recognition will play an enormously important role in the near future in all areas of life and business. In connection with mobile alarming,
Emergency Notifications for Patient Bedside Monitoring using mobile Apps
Modern alerting systems based on mobile apps can achieve significant efficiency gains in healthcare and reduce the working pressure on nursing staff. Here we describe how such a solution is used for patient and bedside monitoring. Challenges in patient bedside monitoring in hospitals In a hospital, there is an existing patient monitoring system (bedside monitoring system,
Mobile Alerting complements SCADA systems in the Utilities Sector
Utilities companies represent a particular challenge for modern alarm solutions complementing SCADA systems. Due to the decentralised distribution of installations and plants in rural and urban areas, operation, maintenance and repair are already associated with considerable technical, logistical and personnel expenditure. Several factors that are negligible in centralized scenarios must be taken into account. Location, accessibility,
Machine Breakdown Maintenance Call using the AWS IoT Button
Urgent breakdown maintenance calls are a common scenario on a shop floor, e.g. in manufacturing or logistics. Response is a critical matter as equipment breakdowns bring your operations to a grinding halt. When a machine breaks down or malfunctions, a maintenance engineer on duty or on call needs to be notified, usually through the machine showing blinking red light or manually
AWS CloudWatch Alarms to your mobile phone during after-business hours
If you are using AWS CloudWatch for monitoring your AWS assets 24/7, an effective routing of alarms to IT personnel during after-business-hours is essential for a swift handling of any problems and incidents occurring any given time of the day. This post explains how to route AWS CloudWatch alarms with SIGNL4 to improve your after hour incident response while using
Sending Alerts from a Desktop Browser with zapier
How can you quickly send an urgent alert to a response team from your desktop browser? Here is a pretty slick example for Google Chrome implemented with zapier and SIGNL4. SIGNL4 is for sending persistent mobile alerts to your response team. It provides for simple duty management (duty check-in & check-out) and routes alerts from other
How reliably is your IT team notified when your website is down?
Nowadays most IT admins will get an email if their website monitoring solution detects a health issue or a website down. Maybe your entire team gets an email. But how likely are you to check your inbox every minute. And don’t you want share on-call duty across your team members? You simply don’t want to have everybody
Azure Application Insights
Are you using Azure Application Insights for health monitoring of your website or web app? If so, I bet you have alerts setup to get notified in case of service health issues. By default, you or your whole team will get an email. But how do you know who took ownership. And in case of urgent issues, how do
SCOM – Mobile Alert Notifications via mobile app, text and voice calls
SIGNL4 provides a convenient, out-of-the-box solution to send mobile SCOM alerts to your ops teams. With SIGNL4 you can build subject expert teams and send SCOM alerts to team members on duty. With the SIGNL4 mobile app, teams easily check-in and check-out to receive SCOM alerts when they are on call. The mobile app will
Microsoft Flow – send mobile Alert Notifications to your Team
Microsoft Flow is a great intuitive workflow and process automation app. It provides a simplified graphic workflow orchestration approach. One of the most used actions in flows is sending or forwarding notifications upon events in your business process. Common notification channels email and mobile push through the Microsoft’ Notification connector. If you need to notify your team and
Mobile alerts for Cumulocity-managed IoT devices
IoT platforms such as Cumulocity by Software AG are a crucial part in a proper “Industry 4.0” implementation. The Deutsche Telekom AG is using Cumulocity for their new IoT products like “Predictive Maintenance” and the “Cloud der Dinge Starterkit”. They are used to connect and organize shop floor machines via the Internet for capturing their data
DevOps – Boost Responsiveness with Alerts
The key to efficient devops procedures lies in responsiveness, clear responsibility and incident ownership. Alerts and notifications are effective tools to increase these key factors. In today’s agile environments with a demanding customer landscape, a rapid response is essential. Alert notifications, ideally of mobile nature, represent a great tool for continuous attention and swift response. Communication
Mobile Push for B2B Communication
SIGNL4 provides a simple way to use mobile push notification to effectively communicate with closed client and customer communities. It opens an excellent channel in B2B communication. Generally, mobile push is an effective mean of communication. Attention level is high and the message-open rate is significantly great than what email yields. For particularly important B2B-related information, this
C# code for the SIGNL4 webhook
When I started with my first Raspberry mini computer, I selected Windows 10 IoT Core as the operating system. This allowed for using Visual Studio and C#. It is not that difficult to call a webhook from your C# code, though a couple of pitfalls await you when your build your Raspberry project (I connected a
Microsoft OMS Alerts to your ITOps Team
Responding to OMS alerts occuring in after-hours can be challenging with Microsoft’s native mobile app, because: People forget to turn off notifications when their duty has ended, but getting them when you are off duty sucks There is no know way for the team to know if people on duty responded to alerts Push sounds are inappropriate for reliable
Azure Monitor
SIGNL4 provides persistent and real-time alert notifications to your admin team. Sending alert notifications exclusively to members on duty reduces response times, notification noise and fatigue. Ownership of alerts improves accountability and ensures real-time transparency. Sample Use Case We will setup an operational alert for an Azure Database. The alert condition will be based on the total
Splunk
There is no easier way to receive mobile alert notifications from Splunk than using SIGNL4, a lightweight notification app for powerful mobile alerting and alert management. Update: There is now a Splunkbase SIGNL4 app available. Here is video how it works. Splunk custom alerts go mobile SIGNL4 offers a webhook that makes integrations extremely simple. Any search alert you create
Custom Weather Alerts on your Mobile
Accessing generic weather information on your smartphone is common these days. But what about custom, condition-based alerts? For instance to Inform your employees automatically about severe weather conditions hampering their morning travel to your office Dispatch snow removal teams Set sails if there are high winds Custom mobile alerts can easily be set up with an automation
IT Monitoring and Operations
Situation Knowing about IT incidents as fast as possible is key in IT Operations Management to ensure maximum IT uptime. Critical incidents or IT problems are often communicated by email only, typically as a broadcast to the complete team. This leads to confusion about who task responsibility (“broadcast dilemma”) and creates “alert fatigue”. Solution SIGNL4 allows
Geofencing Alerts with Automate or Tasker
Objective The simple idea is to trigger a signal when a person or an object leaves a specified area. This can be useful for example if you would like to protect cars, boats, containers or construction equipment from being stolen. In our scenario we will just use an ordinary Android phone as our tracking device.
Alert Notifications for Maintenance Teams
Maintenance of machines is an incredibly important task. And it is important to fix a machine before it completely fails. Once an issue is detected is important to communicate as reliably and quickly as possible to the right engineer. Ideally, the machine is connected directly to team of mobile engineers in charge and can let
Holiday Import from iCal Files
SIGNL4 helps to reliably alert service technicians in facility management, no matter where they are located.
May 2022 Update – Templates, scheduler enhancements, landline numbers, and more
Our May update brings Signl templates for manual alerting, improvements for duty scheduling and various enhancements in the web portal. Another new feature is the possibility to notify through calling landline numbers. All details can be found in this blog article. Templates for manual Signls Manual Signls now comes with templates. Templates can be created
April 2022 Update – Signl categories and duty scheduler improvements
With our April update, we ship some great improvements for Signl categories, category-based alerting and duty scheduling. All details are available in this blog article. Enhanced category matching Category matching can now also be based on text fragments (“keywords”) that must NOT be included in the event payload. Meaning, we’ve added a logical ‘NOT’ operator
Heartbeat check and more – is your monitoring still alive?
SIGNL4 is a cloud-based mobile alerting and incident response service. Third-party systems like monitoring tools, control systems or IoT sensors detect abnormalities and transmit events to SIGNL4 over the Internet. What if your systems cannot transmit critical events anymore? That might happen when the Internet is down or when the tool itself has a problem.
Feature Update: Enhanced security for call routing
Our interim update from March 15 adds important security features to call forwarding to on-callers. Three new settings have been added for call routing numbers: PIN Allow callers Block callers PIN From now on you can assign a PIN to a phone number. A caller must then enter this PIN to be connected to the
February 2022 Update – Centralized and time-based notification patterns
With our February update, it is now possible to centrally configure how Signls should be notified. And of course, each team can have a different configuration of their notification preferences. This also includes response and escalation settings. In addition, it is now possible to set different notification patterns per day and time of the day,
Integration Options with SIGNL4
SIGNL4 integrates with various backend systems like IT monitoring, service management, IoT systems, sensors, etc. to automatically alert users and teams about certain incidents. A list of selected tools along with integration descriptions is available in our integrations section. How can you integrate SIGNL4 with your own tools? Find an overview of the various options offering
Scheduling Managers on Duty for Alert Escalation
A question we are hearing often is related to manager escalations, a heavily utilized feature in SIGNL4. Users ask us if those managers can be scheduled. The short answer is ‘yes’, but you need to use a different feature in SIGNL4 and do a little re-configuration. By November 21 we’ve introduced team escalations (see here)
How to get support?
This post provides an overview on the variety of options and to contact us, if you are seeking technical or other support from the SIGNL4 team. Though, SIGNL4 is designed as a self-service platform and provides an abundance of resources and help, we ‘human’ provide help through our agents whenever needed. Self-Service Let’s first have
December 2021 Update – On-duty board, Manual Signls and Azure Sentinel update
Our December update brings a ‘Who is on duty’ board displaying current team members on duty with contact information. In addition, we have simplified the manual sending of Signls and improved the integration with Azure Sentinel. As always, you can find all the details in this article. Who is on duty? We now answer this
A vital alerting solution
This article should give you a first idea of what SIGNL4 does. What do IT security, production monitoring and technical field service have in common? In all these scenarios, the right people need to get notified immediately – in case of technical malfunctions, urgent maintenance orders or emergencies, all in order to solve any incident
Mobile Service Dispatching for In Plant Transport Logistics at BASF Coatings
„SIGNL4, is a highly intuitive seamless mobile control system for intra-logistics processes. We were looking for an attractive visualization that enables a smooth change management within the teams. Changing process is always a challenge but the greatest sceptics soon became the greatest fans of SIGNL4.” Victor Kaupe, Project Management Logistics EMEA, BASF Coatings Challenge BASF
Publish SIGNL4 oncall and alert information to your Grafana dashboard
Grafana is as open source analytics and interactive visualization application. You can connect different data sources to display chart and graphs or even trigger alerts. Wouldn’t it be great to add information about SIGNL4 alerts or about who is on call as part of your dashboard? In this case you immediately get an overview about
November 2021 Update – Improved incident response with team escalation and more
Our November update introduces new team settings and, along with them, entirely new options for escalating Signls. This will allow you to make your incident response even more reliable. One application is to create a ‘managers on duty’ teams with full duty scheduling capabilities and escalate missed Signls to such 2nd level response team. As
Building Automated Monitoring with Icinga and SIGNL4
How many servers can be managed by one system administrator? This question is not an easy one since it definitely depends on the tasks that need to be operated. However, it´s quite clear that the amount of servers one engineer can manage has increased enormously over time, and is still growing. Yet, public and private
Android App Update: Mute and enhanced ‘Do not disturb’ override
With our latest Android app update (3.1., build 242) you will never miss a critical SIGNL4 alert again. Even if your phone is muted or in do-not-disturb mode, SIGNL4 can now make a lot of ‘noise’ and wake you up reliably when a major or critical incident occurs. Here is how it works…. Mute and
Why Net at Work employees are sleeping soundly
Meet a typical challenge of 24/7 IT operations Net at Work is a German IT company with over 100 employees that provides its customers with solutions and tools for digital communication and collaboration. Their product NoSpamProxy offers reliable protection against spam and ransomware, legally compliant email encryption and more. Customers of Net at Work are
September 2021 Update: Routing voice calls to on-call staff
Yippie! Our September update adds live call routing as well as a voice mailbox with notification feature to SIGNL4. All details can be found in this article. The scenario The typical scenario for call routing is to offer a hotline for partners, clients or staff and then route incoming calls automatically to the person on
Automatic Alert Export to Third-Party Systems
In the SIGNL4 web portal you can manually export historic alert reports as .csv files. In some cases it might be useful to export alert data programmatically. For example you can forward all alerts including specific parameters to InfluxDB and show the alert history in Grafana to recognize peaks, trends and abnormalities over time. You
Thank you for your fantastic reviews of our mobile alerting app!
We would like to thank our loyal customers for the numerous reviews of SIGNL4! We are excited that you share your opinion on various rating platforms with other people and support us. Why we work with G2Crowd and Capterra G2Crowd is the largest B2B marketplace for software in the world, where you can already find
July 2021 Update: Users can be members of multiple teams
The time has come! Users in SIGNL4 can now be a member of multiple teams. This allows for staff to be on duty in multiple groups or departments in parallel and to receive related alert notifications for incidents that occur in the different teams. In addition, you can now also send Signls to multiple teams.
Duty Schedule Import from Third-Party Systems
SIGNL4 helps to reliably alert service technicians in facility management, no matter where they are located.
5 typical mistakes in alerting and how to avoid them
A good alerting strategy is an important prerequisite for successful operations management and the availability of mission-critical systems. But also for employee satisfaction. It’s not just about sending out alerts upon critical conditions, problems and failures at all, but more importantly, about how it is done. Here are the 5 most typical mistakes, their consequences
Alerting of Service Technicians in Facility Management
SIGNL4 helps to reliably alert service technicians in facility management, no matter where they are located.
Three fundamental tips for an effective event filtering in SIGNL4
Event and alert filtering matters because alert fatigue is one of the most crucial issues in alerting and alert management. SIGNL4 implements a lightweight and effective way of filtering events. The overall process is based on alert categories. Alert categories are applied using a keyword search across the entire payload of incoming third-party events. But
Adding Rich Content to Alerts, Work Orders or Service Requests
When you send alerts, work orders or service requests to your workers in the field, on the shop floor or campus it is essential to provide them with all relevant information necessary to solve the task. This prevents misunderstandings, avoids waste work, time for searching information and thus increases productivity and facilities an effective, timely
February 2021 Update: Copy duty slots, password change and 2-way integration with ServiceNow and Checkmk
With our February 2021 update, we have added more features to our account management portal. We’ve now added a copy mode to the duty and shift calendar providing an even better shift and duty scheduling experience. You can now also monitor your personal profile and change your password in the account portal. We have now
2-way integration with ConnectWise Manage
SIGNL4 now includes a new app for connecting to ConnectWise Manage (“Manage”). This makes 2-way integration with Manage a breeze, and responding to service desk tickets can now be done conveniently via mobile app in SIGNL4. This blog article has all the important details. What features does the integration offer? The integration offers the following
Segment and SIGNL4: Know your Customer’s Actions, Anywhere and Anytime
You have a web site, app, online shop, or SaaS offering? Then you have plenty of user actions. That can be visiting a certain page, signing up for a service or canceling a subscription. Wouldn’t it be great to know in real time when an important customer action takes place? This would allow you sales,
December 2020 Update: Multiple teams, new user management and enterprise licensing
Our December update lets it rip once again: From now on, you can create and manage multiple teams in your SIGNL4 subscription. For this purpose, we have also added a new user role and enhanced our web app. This makes it much easier to centrally manage multiple departments in your organization. Creating, setting up and
October 2020 Update: Mute overwrite for iPhone (Critical Alerts), undo and more
Our October update brings the long-awaited mute-overwrite on iPhone (‘critical alerts’). We also introduce an undo action for Signl acknowledgements or closures. And in the web app you can now batch-ack and close to multiple Signls at once. All new features are introduced below – enjoy. Mute-overwrite on iPhones (Critical Alerts) We are delighted to
How SIGNL4 provides for a digital handover procedure
Handover procedures in operations and maintenance are a key element of business continuity. As work in this field is usually organized in shifts, it is essential to keep track of any critical incidents, machine breakdowns, job ownership, completion, issues that are still open or unresolved and other related items. Such knowledge has a significant impact
Why you need to stop the handover of that shared on-call duty phone
If you are still handing over a shared on-call duty phone or pager (sometimes called ‘operations phone’), it is time to rethink your process. The Covid19-induced new normal has a dramatic impact on our work live and social behavior. We work from home and that is especially true for the IT workforce. We meet with
September 2020 Update: All-new Webhook and API Key Management
Our September update provides you with self-service API key management from the SIGNL4 web portal. Finally, you can fully exploit our comprehensive REST API. We also improved management of outbound webhook which can update your systems with any information on Signl handling. API Key Management It is now possible to manage API keys for the
No More False Alerts at Night
Do you know this situation? You are on-call and in the middle of the night you get a phone call. Loud enough to wake you up. Loud enough to wake your wife up, as well. You stand up and check your emails to see what the problem is. OK, you got it. Then you log
How SIGNL4 solves typical problems in network monitoring
A new article in the September issue of German magazine LANLine (“Automation creates productivity”) summarizes typical challenges and problems in network monitoring very well and is worth reading. I would like to briefly discuss some of the problems addressed and how our product SIGNL4 was developed as a solution for exactly these problems. Problem 1:
Website Monitoring with SIGNL4
SIGNL4’s core job is to reliably alert operational teams. However, we’ve been asked a couple of times if SIGNL4 can also monitor a website’s uptime. Well, we developed an app and it is now available in the SIGNL4 app gallery. You can now monitor the availability of websites AND get instantly alerted if it goes
August 2020 Update: Manage service and system categories in the web portal and define responsibilities centrally
Our August update now makes it easy to assign team responsibilities for individual systems through our categories. This is no longer only possible by each team member in the mobile app, but can now also be done centrally in the web portal by the team administrator. All details can be found in this blog article.
July 2020 Update: Close alerts in SIGNL4 when the issue was resolved in the backend
Our July update brings new features to the email and webhook API’s. You can now close alerts in SIGNL4 when the issue was resolved in your backend system. Use Case A typical use case is IT monitoring and auto-recovery. Imagine you get an alert in the middle of the night about an IT issue. A
Press Release: SIGNL4 Now Available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace
Microsoft Azure customers worldwide now gain access to SIGNL4 to take advantage of the scalability, reliability and agility of Azure to drive application development and shape business strategies. Richmond, June 15 2020 Today, Derdack (www.signl4.com), provider of critical alerting for operations teams, announced the availability of SIGNL4 in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, an online store
Business Continuity Planning and Effective Communication – by Laura Toplis
With many companies utilizing remote-working during the COVID-19 pandemic, effective communication is more important than ever. Unfortunately, being in the middle of responding to a global pandemic will not prevent your organization from suffering from other business disruptions. Likely disruptions you may face are: Cyber/ phishing attacks – these attacks can cripple your regular communication
May 2020 Update: Alert management and chat in web portal and upcoming duties in the mobile app
Our May update brings new features to our Signl Center in the web app and adds a new view that displays your upcoming duties to the mobile app! Upcoming Duties Preview When part of an on-call duty team, your private life and work-life-balance are pretty much affected. Knowing about scheduled duties in advance and having
April 2020 Update: Goodbye “I never got that alert” and emergency alerting – the new Signl Center
Our April update is BIG. It introduces emergency alerting to reach you entire team. We hope this will be a bit of humble support to your organization in this Covid-19 crisis. The core of this release is the new signl center, the new place to track alerts and their delivery in real-time, to see incoming
How SIGNL4 supports geolocation and GPS information
SIGNL4 provides great support for geolocation information and in multiple ways. When a new alert with geolocation information is displayed in the mobile app, the app renders a map to visualize geographic information of the incident. A double click allows to open the default map application on the mobile device, e.g. to get directions or
How to create user groups and route alerts
“Servcies&Systems” category subscriptions provide a highly flexible way of routing alerts to specific user groups. This can for instance be used to route alerts based on responsibilities or skills. But other scenarios are possible too as the category subscription mechanism is extremely powerful. First layer of alert routing – duty status SIGNL4 currently provides
Chatbot integration with Microsoft Teams and Slack
SIGNL4 provides plug-and-play chatbot integrations with Microsoft Teams and Slack, both via certified chatbot apps. Why does it makes sense to integrate SIGNL4 with chat tools after all? There are two basic uses cases that we address with the integration into Teams and Slack. Using Teams and Slack as additional notification channels By default,
February 2020 Update: Legacy Pager Support, Scheduler User Role, Improved Duty Report and Microsoft Teams Bot
Our first SIGNL4 release tin 2020 includes some great new features. Have a look: Notify your Legacy Pager For all those who still need to work with pager devices in addition to their smartphone, it is now possible to include this device in the alarm workflow. This might be the case to secure alert delivery
How SIGNL4 supports alert severity
Event and alert severity are extremely important information for an effective alert management and response. Severity information determine the speed of response, needed resource allocation and the action path taken. Naturally, critical alerts have higher priority than major alerts which again overrule minor alerts. However, as monitoring, security and other control systems have different ways
Join our first “Ask me anything” webinar
We are more than excited to host our first ‘ask me anything’ session on SIGNL4. Here is our agenda: You will meet our experts Matt, René and Patrick. Any questions or feature requests can be discussed and answered here. We will give you an update on the latest features additions Get exclusive insights into our
December 2019 Update 2: Alert Counters, Category Subscription, Webhook Format
Our 2nd December update adds alert counters to the web app, allows for disabling the opt-in/out from “Services & Systems” categories and adds a new encoding format to the SIGNL4 webbhook. New webhook payload format The SIGNL4 webhook now also digest payload of ‘application/x-www-form-urlencoded‘ type. A payload/webhook call of this kind would like: POST /webhook/ihdm29y8
December 2019 Update: User roles, App enhancements and Azure Sentinel integration
Our December update includes a new role model for users in a SIGNL4 team, great new app features and integration with Azure Sentinel. Introducing user roles Two default user roles are now available in each SIGNL4 team: Administrator and User. This allows for restricting standard user rights versus administrative access. For existing teams, all users
Advanced alerting and anywhere alert management for Azure Monitor
Have you ever wanted to get important alerts from Azure Monitor notified on your smartphone and have all the important details of the problem at your fingertips? Have you ever missed the option to easily change the status of alerts from Azure Monitor in the Azure smartphone app? Ever missed a push notification because there
Enable SSO and MFA by adding SIGNL4 as an enterprise app in Azure Active Directory
This article describes how SIGNL4 can be generally authorized as an enterprise app for Azure AD users (Marketplace Link). This is important if you want to implement the use of SIGNL4 in your company with existing user accounts from the Azure AD. Attention: Please, also refer to this knowledge base article. Initial situation Using SIGNL4
October 2019 Update: Improved usability and new emergency alarm triggering in the app
The October update of the mobile app includes the improvements described below and the user experience includes a new feature. Simplified handling of categories The user interface of the app has been improved so that you can now decide for yourself if you want to see all Signls on the dashboard differentiated by categories. Using
September 2019 Update: Improved assigning of categories
Our September update improves the assignment of categories to Signl alerts, hence the enrichment and routing of alerts to the right people. New Category Assignment Operator Until now, a ‘Services & Systems’ category was assigned to a Signl alert, if at least one of the entered keywords was found in the event content or text
August 2019 Update: Mobile Alert Dashboard and PSD2 Support
Our August update makes SIGNL4 fit for the new “Payment Services Directive 2”. In addition, we have added extended the mobile alert dashboard and added new metrics. The enhanced dashboard of the SIGNL4 mobile app now shows alert counters per ‘services & systems’ category. Here come the details…. Category Dashboard Metrics When opening the SIGNL4
July 2019 Update: Alert Opt-In and Out, Apps Section and Getting Started
July 2019 Update introduces the option to opt-out for certain categories as well as some enhancements in the Web portal. Manage which alerts you want and how: ‘Services & Systems’ Category Opt-Out You can now opt-in/out of certain categories under Settings -> Services & Systems. This works on a per-user basis and is useful when
Welcome to our Partner Program – SIGNL4Partners
We are super-excited about launching our new referral partner program, SIGNL4Partners. The program is dedicated to solution providers and system integrators just like you. Any company can join the program, no matter if you are an IoT Hardware vendor or specialize in software solutions. Benefits of joining SIGNL4Partners are: 20% revenue share from all registered
May 2019 Update: Response Metrics, Multi-Alert Actions and Web Signup
The May 2019 Update introduces web sign-up and some great, long-awaited mobile app enhancements! Mobile App: Multi-Alert Confirmation and Resolution We have added the capability to confirm and resolve multiple alert signls at once. Simply tap the new 3-dot-button on the top right and select “Confirm all” / “Resolve all”. Please keep in mind that these
Unexpected IT downtime costs your business more than you think
IT downtime can effect businesses of all sizes. From online retailers and event promoters to cloud-based service providers and 24/7 security teams, all modern businesses are at risk of facing both monetary and organizational costs that can stack up in a matter of minutes. Users (internal and external) may not be able to access websites
Alert escalation – How it works in SIGNL4
This article explains the simplicity and effectiveness of alert escalation in SIGNL4. The case for alert escalations Part of any managers role is to make sure their team is taking accountability. Managers are not the front lines resolvers that handle issues, that is what they have a team for. However, managers do need to be
SIEM Alerting with SIGNL4
Many businesses of all sizes are now aware of the never-ending security risks that threaten the condition of their IT infrastructure. Larger companies have begun to adopt Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) software solutions to assist in the daily oversight of their IT security. By taking the best elements of Security Event Management (SEM), which
April 2019 Update: Event Filtering
This update introduces an effective mechanism for event filtering to SIGNL4. You can now use the keywords of your ‘services & systems’ categories as a whitelist. If you enable this keyword whitelist, SIGNL4 performs a keyword search across all parameters and content of a received event (e.g. received by email or webhook). It will then
February 2019 Update: Convenient Duty and Shift Scheduling in your Browser
The February 2019 update brings the long anticipated duty and shift scheduling. It further improves SIGNL4’s capabilities of delivering the right information to the right people at the right time. Shift Scheduling Basics Shift scheduling in SIGNL4 is done through the account/team management portal. It works with any browser and provides an enormous flexibility. You
Never Miss After-Hours Customer Calls to Your Service Hotline
An upset customer is calling your service hotline in the middle of night because an important system stopped working. A sleepy engineer, just woken up by that call, somehow tries to answer the bullet-like questions of your customer. The result: unhappiness on both sides. Sounds familiar? Here is what you can do: For an enterprise
Mobile B2B SaaS Success – Q&A with Matthes Derdack
SIGNL4 is a mobile SaaS solution built to address the needs of on-the-go operations teams across many industries. Stemming from German parent company, Derdack, SIGNL4 looks to provide agility and reliability where other solutions on the market may not. Aside from its core strength in persistent mobile team alerting, this application has been developed taking ino account recent trends in software
SIGNL4 Alert and Shift Reports with Microsoft Excel
Though SIGNL4 does not provide canned reports (yet), it allows for downloading all required data of on-call times, alerts and responses. Hence all it takes is an external tool to process and analyse those logs. Shift and alerts logs can be used to review workload of your team members, frequency of certain alert types, hours
December 2018 Update: The magic of Alert Enrichment through Categorization
The update of December 2018 adds great features for enriching Signls with additional information (‘alert enrichment’). With “Services and Systems” categories, SIGNL4 already comes with an unique approach of categorizing alerts through colouring and acoustics, i.e. a dedicated push sound. But why not use this categorization feature for adding information to Signl alerts? Why is
Being a powerful ‘pager app’ SIGNL4 can easily replace a pager
The short answer is: “Yes, SIGNL4 can.” SIGNL4 can be seen as a so-called “pager app” for Android and iPhone. But more than that. Here is the how and why of it. A pager is a small radio receiver. Each pager has a unique code or phone number. All the pagers that are in everyone’s
Smart City – Automatically Dispatch Snow Clearing Teams Upon Weather Alerts
Many cities provide snow clearing services. It is especially important at night to inform teams about snow warnings as snow accumulation can be troublesome for the masses in the morning of the following day. When to expect snow can be found online, but is this form of weather detection reliable enough to mobilize service teams
Setting up the AWS IoT Button – and SIGNL4
The AWS IoT Button is a great IoT device. A simple press of a button turns into unlimited possibilities. And with SIGNL4 you can easily trigger mobile alerts to operations or security teams. Almost in real-time. What is the AWS IoT Button? The AWS IoT Button is the ‘unlinked’ version of the Amazon Dash Button
November 2018 Update: Multi-Team Licensing
The November update introduces central management and licensing of multiple teams. Multiple teams can now be billed through a single account. This eases purchasing and license management for anybody with more than one team on SIGNL4. Additionally, teams can centrally be created, stocked up with user licenses and even deleted. How does it work? The
Query email mailbox (Gmail) with Zapier to trigger SIGNL4 alert notifications
Sometimes you need to query an existing mailbox for specific emails instead of forwarding emails directly to your SIGNL4 team email address. This example uses Zapier to query a Gmail mail account. New emails with specific content then trigger alert notifications through SIGNL4. Zapier is great workflow tool and provides integrations with almost any mailbox type.
The New Norm – How Consumerization Trends Impact the B2B Software Business
Business-to-business, also known as B2B, has not always been recognized as the glamorous side of marketing and sales no matter what industry. This is even more evident when discussing the sale of software and enterprise applications. Previously, this was a rather stale environment, however, in today’s strong-buyer scenario, things have begun to change. Due to the abundance
Real-time mobile alerts for monitoring of dry contacts with Web-IO from Wiesemann & Theis
Machines, pumps, valves, fire alert systems, temperature sensors, smoke detectors, etc. often do not offer IT integration. Instead, they provide simple analog cables to interface with dry contacts. Monitoring these I/O states and detecting abnormal behavior or malfunctions a common scenario in industrial IoT. Operations teams in charge of business and operational continuity need to know
How we view partnership at SIGNL4
Imagine being a child on a playground. You see other children playing tag, climbing, sliding, laughing… and you are digging in the sandbox alone. You are content, but you question if this is the best way to go about your day. Sure, you can go play on the swings for a solid 20 minutes, but that
Google Assistant – Alert and Notify your Response Team
In a previous article we’ve shown how to send alerts to SIGNL4 from Amazon Alexa. It is also possible to do the same using the Google Assistant, either on your mobile device or using your Google Home speaker. Setting it up is easy if you are tech-savvy. You need an Android phone with the Google Assistant,
IoT Platforms are lacking effective Alerting for Mobile Operations Teams
The Internet of Things (IoT) has become an exciting area of work. Businesses are rapidly adapting various IoT products whether they realize it or not. Thanks to the booming development of Internet of Things, users across industries can now easily monitor, trigger, and maintain processes and equipment with a brilliant software and strong networks. The infrastructural pieces
Boost Agility of Shop Floor Teams for Industry 4.0 with Mobile Alerting
*This article was first published on Microsoft’s Manufacturing Industry Blog on July 17, 2018. The fourth industrial revolution, Industry 4.0, is happening today. Recent progress in manufacturing automation requires fewer individuals on a shop floor to do manual work with and at machines. However, those people are now required to respond faster and more effectively
Four Cool IoT Devices Paving the Way for IoT Market Growth
The development and rise of cool, tiny and smart devices of all shapes and functions is the foundation of the Internet of Things (IoT). Many of these mechanisms shared below are relatively small in size, but do not let that fool you. These are powerful products that have been endorsed by many. Today, I will introduce
The Internet of Things is Driving our Future
We live in an age of hyper-connectedness. Specific-function devices are now able to relay information to networks in real-time with ease. To put it simply, we live among the Internet of Things (IoT). In this article, we will dive into what IoT is, where it is headed, and what that means for consumers and businesses in
Mobile Apps, and the Future of Field Service Management and Dispatching
Field service management (FSM) is the business-official way of mentioning all the operational and administrative work that goes into on-location service delivery. In other words, FSM is the juggling act that involves everything from accounting and customer relationship management (CRM) to service dispatching and enterprise resource planning (ERP). One can find FSM in many industries like IT,
Separating Alert Signals from Notification Overload
On our smart phones, we receive an abundance of personal and business push notifications every day. Business and business-critical push notifications are meant to be read, ideally acknowledged, and acted on in an attentive manner. The problem is that people cannot always be contacted effectively with a simple push notification. Today I am going to
June 2018 Update: Team Acknowledgements and Sending of Alerts from a Web Browser
June 2018 update brings two cool features: Acknowledgement of alerts by all team members (on duty) Sending of alerts to the team from a Web Browser Happy exploring! Group alerting with multiple acknowledgements There are multiple models of how many people are required to acknowledge a critical alert. Typical for IT and other areas of maintenance and
Get a mobile alert when your Internet link is down
The app-based alerting service SIGNL4, enables you to send alerts from your corporate infrastructure via e-mail or webhook. Your team will then receive the notifications by push, SMS or phone call. But what if the Internet connection is no longer available and you cannot transmit the alerts to SIGNL4? Below we describe a convenient method
Five SaaS Tools to Optimize Team Productivity
In the digital age, it is extremely helpful to have Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tools in place to maximize team productivity. SaaS tools are great because they take essential work tasks, and slim them down into user-friendly web and mobile applications. Below I have recommended five SaaS tools available online. I selected these as they are applicable
Push, text and voice notifications from Google Forms
SIGNL4 offers easy-to-use interfaces for triggering notifications, e.g. email and Webhook. In some scenarios you might want to send signals manually from a Web portal. Google Forms is one option to add this feature to SIGNL4. The following steps show you how to setup a simple Web form for manually sending signals to your SIGNL4
May 2018 Update: Text and Voice Calls, Geo Location, Flood Protection, AppConfig enhancements
We are incredibly proud to announce the May 2018 update, which adds the following new features to SIGNL4: Persistent alert notifications via text and voice call In-app triggered alerts transmit current geographic location Alerts can be enriched with maps and geolocation Intelligent notification flood protection algorithm (notification suppression) Extended MDM support (MobileIron) for App Config
April 2018 Update: API Enhancements, Duty Length, Countries, Splunk
The April 2018 update adds the following new features to SIGNL4: New methods and method enhancements for the REST API and webhook A new duty & shift length of 14 days Availability in new countries Happy exploring! Outbound webhooks: Correlate alert-status changes and the original event We have addressed requests for better correlation of alert-triggering
Mobile ChatOps built-in
When a critical problem needs attention, advice from peers and experts is often valuable. While a phone call might be the fastest way to communicate, there can be circumstances where it doesn’t work or isn’t appropriate. That is why we built a chat feature into SIGNL4. Mobile ChatOps in SIGNL4 The built-in mobile chat is
Android settings for making SIGNL4 an even better paging app
The problem with push notifications as an alarm channel is that they don’t really alert you when the phone is set to “Do not disturb”. The mobile phone will vibrate only, if at all. Important alarms will be missed. That might turn into a true disaster for critical alerts! So what’s the alternative? You can
February 18 Update: Alert Audit Trail, Management of 3rd Party Apps
The February 2018 update adds the following new features to SIGNL4: CSV alert protocols, e.g. for Excel import and analytics Management of linked third-party applications, e. g. Alexa Skill CSV audit trail log of all alarms and notifications With the help of the CSV audit trail protocols, it is now possible to evaluate how many
Shift Scheduling with StaffHub – Alerting with SIGNL4
We live in a somewhat paradoxical world. Our cars, or those that will soon be automatically brought to us via an Alexa voice command, drive us e. g. independently to the doctor or in front of a furniture store. Once there, however, it is just not possible to read in the chip card for registration
Mobile Business Notifications with Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM
Managers and executives are always interested in current company data and KPIs (“key performance indicators”). This includes information about the current monthly and annual turnover. But also promising customer requests (A leads) that may require the collaboration of several departments. And of course also critical technical incidents at customers who need a quick solution to ensure
Amazon Alexa – Send Alerts and Notify your Response Team
With Amazon Alexa, the Internet giant, Amazon, has quickly established itself as a leading company in the field of digital assistants with speech recognition. We here at Derdack SIGNL4 believe that speech recognition will play an enormously important role in the near future in all areas of life and business. In connection with mobile alarming,
Emergency Notifications for Patient Bedside Monitoring using mobile Apps
Modern alerting systems based on mobile apps can achieve significant efficiency gains in healthcare and reduce the working pressure on nursing staff. Here we describe how such a solution is used for patient and bedside monitoring. Challenges in patient bedside monitoring in hospitals In a hospital, there is an existing patient monitoring system (bedside monitoring system,
Mobile Alerting complements SCADA systems in the Utilities Sector
Utilities companies represent a particular challenge for modern alarm solutions complementing SCADA systems. Due to the decentralised distribution of installations and plants in rural and urban areas, operation, maintenance and repair are already associated with considerable technical, logistical and personnel expenditure. Several factors that are negligible in centralized scenarios must be taken into account. Location, accessibility,
Machine Breakdown Maintenance Call using the AWS IoT Button
Urgent breakdown maintenance calls are a common scenario on a shop floor, e.g. in manufacturing or logistics. Response is a critical matter as equipment breakdowns bring your operations to a grinding halt. When a machine breaks down or malfunctions, a maintenance engineer on duty or on call needs to be notified, usually through the machine showing blinking red light or manually
AWS CloudWatch Alarms to your mobile phone during after-business hours
If you are using AWS CloudWatch for monitoring your AWS assets 24/7, an effective routing of alarms to IT personnel during after-business-hours is essential for a swift handling of any problems and incidents occurring any given time of the day. This post explains how to route AWS CloudWatch alarms with SIGNL4 to improve your after hour incident response while using
Sending Alerts from a Desktop Browser with zapier
How can you quickly send an urgent alert to a response team from your desktop browser? Here is a pretty slick example for Google Chrome implemented with zapier and SIGNL4. SIGNL4 is for sending persistent mobile alerts to your response team. It provides for simple duty management (duty check-in & check-out) and routes alerts from other
How reliably is your IT team notified when your website is down?
Nowadays most IT admins will get an email if their website monitoring solution detects a health issue or a website down. Maybe your entire team gets an email. But how likely are you to check your inbox every minute. And don’t you want share on-call duty across your team members? You simply don’t want to have everybody
Azure Application Insights
Are you using Azure Application Insights for health monitoring of your website or web app? If so, I bet you have alerts setup to get notified in case of service health issues. By default, you or your whole team will get an email. But how do you know who took ownership. And in case of urgent issues, how do
SCOM – Mobile Alert Notifications via mobile app, text and voice calls
SIGNL4 provides a convenient, out-of-the-box solution to send mobile SCOM alerts to your ops teams. With SIGNL4 you can build subject expert teams and send SCOM alerts to team members on duty. With the SIGNL4 mobile app, teams easily check-in and check-out to receive SCOM alerts when they are on call. The mobile app will
Microsoft Flow – send mobile Alert Notifications to your Team
Microsoft Flow is a great intuitive workflow and process automation app. It provides a simplified graphic workflow orchestration approach. One of the most used actions in flows is sending or forwarding notifications upon events in your business process. Common notification channels email and mobile push through the Microsoft’ Notification connector. If you need to notify your team and
Mobile alerts for Cumulocity-managed IoT devices
IoT platforms such as Cumulocity by Software AG are a crucial part in a proper “Industry 4.0” implementation. The Deutsche Telekom AG is using Cumulocity for their new IoT products like “Predictive Maintenance” and the “Cloud der Dinge Starterkit”. They are used to connect and organize shop floor machines via the Internet for capturing their data
DevOps – Boost Responsiveness with Alerts
The key to efficient devops procedures lies in responsiveness, clear responsibility and incident ownership. Alerts and notifications are effective tools to increase these key factors. In today’s agile environments with a demanding customer landscape, a rapid response is essential. Alert notifications, ideally of mobile nature, represent a great tool for continuous attention and swift response. Communication
Mobile Push for B2B Communication
SIGNL4 provides a simple way to use mobile push notification to effectively communicate with closed client and customer communities. It opens an excellent channel in B2B communication. Generally, mobile push is an effective mean of communication. Attention level is high and the message-open rate is significantly great than what email yields. For particularly important B2B-related information, this
C# code for the SIGNL4 webhook
When I started with my first Raspberry mini computer, I selected Windows 10 IoT Core as the operating system. This allowed for using Visual Studio and C#. It is not that difficult to call a webhook from your C# code, though a couple of pitfalls await you when your build your Raspberry project (I connected a
Microsoft OMS Alerts to your ITOps Team
Responding to OMS alerts occuring in after-hours can be challenging with Microsoft’s native mobile app, because: People forget to turn off notifications when their duty has ended, but getting them when you are off duty sucks There is no know way for the team to know if people on duty responded to alerts Push sounds are inappropriate for reliable
Azure Monitor
SIGNL4 provides persistent and real-time alert notifications to your admin team. Sending alert notifications exclusively to members on duty reduces response times, notification noise and fatigue. Ownership of alerts improves accountability and ensures real-time transparency. Sample Use Case We will setup an operational alert for an Azure Database. The alert condition will be based on the total
Splunk
There is no easier way to receive mobile alert notifications from Splunk than using SIGNL4, a lightweight notification app for powerful mobile alerting and alert management. Update: There is now a Splunkbase SIGNL4 app available. Here is video how it works. Splunk custom alerts go mobile SIGNL4 offers a webhook that makes integrations extremely simple. Any search alert you create
Custom Weather Alerts on your Mobile
Accessing generic weather information on your smartphone is common these days. But what about custom, condition-based alerts? For instance to Inform your employees automatically about severe weather conditions hampering their morning travel to your office Dispatch snow removal teams Set sails if there are high winds Custom mobile alerts can easily be set up with an automation
IT Monitoring and Operations
Situation Knowing about IT incidents as fast as possible is key in IT Operations Management to ensure maximum IT uptime. Critical incidents or IT problems are often communicated by email only, typically as a broadcast to the complete team. This leads to confusion about who task responsibility (“broadcast dilemma”) and creates “alert fatigue”. Solution SIGNL4 allows
Geofencing Alerts with Automate or Tasker
Objective The simple idea is to trigger a signal when a person or an object leaves a specified area. This can be useful for example if you would like to protect cars, boats, containers or construction equipment from being stolen. In our scenario we will just use an ordinary Android phone as our tracking device.
Alert Notifications for Maintenance Teams
Maintenance of machines is an incredibly important task. And it is important to fix a machine before it completely fails. Once an issue is detected is important to communicate as reliably and quickly as possible to the right engineer. Ideally, the machine is connected directly to team of mobile engineers in charge and can let