Alert Banners

Alert banners are system-wide notifications that appear at the top of the dashboard for all users. They are useful for communicating maintenance windows, system outages, important announcements, or urgent notices that affect all users of your Legend instance.

Accessing Alert Management

To access alert management:

1. Click your user menu in the top-right corner
2. Select Admin Panel from the dropdown
3. Click Alerts in the admin sidebar

Only users in the Admins group can create and manage alerts. All users can view active alerts on the dashboard.

Alert Severity Levels

Alerts have five severity levels that determine their visual appearance and prominence:

Info: Blue banner for informational messages

• Use for: General announcements, upcoming features, tips
• Example: “New documentation is available for the topology explorer”

Low: Green banner for positive or minor notices

• Use for: Successful deployments, completed migrations, positive updates
• Example: “Database migration completed successfully”

Medium: Yellow banner for warnings or important notices

• Use for: Scheduled maintenance, performance degradation, known issues
• Example: “Scheduled maintenance window: Saturday 2:00 AM - 4:00 AM UTC”

High: Orange banner for serious warnings

• Use for: Service degradation, security advisories, critical issues
• Example: “Performance degradation detected. Investigation in progress.”

Urgent: Red banner for critical alerts

• Use for: System outages, security incidents, data loss risks
• Example: “System outage in progress. All services unavailable.”

Choose the severity level based on the importance and urgency of the message. Overusing high or urgent severity levels can reduce their impact.

Creating Alerts

To create a new alert:

1. Navigate to Admin Panel > Alerts
2. Click the Create Alert button
3. Enter the alert title (required, concise summary)
4. Enter the alert description (optional, detailed information)
5. Select the severity level (info, low, medium, high, urgent)
6. Optionally enter a link URL (users can click to learn more)
7. Set the start date and time (when the alert should appear)
8. Set the end date and time (when the alert should disappear)
9. Optionally configure recurrence (requires Business tier)
10. Click Create to save the alert

The alert appears on the dashboard immediately if the start date is in the past or current. If the start date is in the future, the alert will appear automatically when that date and time is reached.

Clear and Concise Messages

Keep alert titles short and descriptive. Users should understand the message at a glance. Use the description field for additional details and context.

Alert Properties

Each alert has the following properties:

Title (required):

• A concise summary of the alert
• Displayed prominently in the banner
• Should be clear and actionable
• Maximum length: 200 characters

Description (optional):

• Detailed information about the alert
• Provides context and additional details
• Supports plain text formatting
• Maximum length: 2000 characters

Severity (required):

• Determines the visual appearance (color) of the banner
• Should match the importance of the message
• Options: info, low, medium, high, urgent

Link (optional):

• URL that users can click to learn more
• Useful for linking to status pages, documentation, or incident reports
• Displayed as a clickable link in the alert banner

Start Date (required):

• When the alert should begin appearing
• Can be set to a past date to show immediately
• Uses the server’s timezone

End Date (required):

• When the alert should stop appearing
• Must be after the start date
• Alerts are automatically hidden after the end date

Recurrence (optional, Business tier):

• Pattern for repeating alerts
• Options: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual
• Useful for recurring maintenance windows or regular notices

Viewing and Managing Alerts

The alert management page displays all alerts, both active and inactive:

Active alerts: Alerts that are currently displayed on the dashboard

• Shown at the top of the list
• Displayed with a green “Active” badge
• Can be edited or deleted

Scheduled alerts: Alerts with a future start date

• Shown below active alerts
• Displayed with a blue “Scheduled” badge
• Will activate automatically at the start date
• Can be edited or deleted

Expired alerts: Alerts with a past end date

• Shown at the bottom of the list
• Displayed with a gray “Expired” badge
• No longer visible to users
• Can be deleted to clean up the list

Actions:

• Edit: Modify alert properties (title, description, severity, dates)
• Delete: Permanently remove the alert
• View: See how the alert appears on the dashboard

Recurring Alerts

Business Recurring alerts require the Business tier.

Recurring alerts automatically repeat on a schedule, eliminating the need to manually recreate alerts for regular events like maintenance windows.

Recurrence patterns:

• Daily: Alert appears every day at the specified time
• Weekly: Alert appears on the same day of the week
• Monthly: Alert appears on the same day of the month
• Quarterly: Alert appears every three months
• Annual: Alert appears once per year

How recurrence works:

• The alert appears during the specified time window
• After the end date, the alert is hidden
• The alert automatically reappears at the next recurrence
• This continues indefinitely until the alert is deleted

Example use cases:

• Weekly maintenance windows: “Every Tuesday 2:00 AM - 4:00 AM UTC”
• Monthly security scans: “First Monday of each month”
• Quarterly compliance reviews: “Every three months”
• Annual license renewal reminders: “Every year on the renewal date”

Recurrence and Timezones

Recurring alerts use the server’s timezone. Ensure your start and end times are set correctly for your organization’s timezone. If your users are in multiple timezones, consider using UTC to avoid confusion.

Tier Requirements

Alert functionality varies by license tier:

Community Basic alerts

• Can create and manage alerts
• All severity levels available
• No scheduling or recurrence
• Alerts appear immediately when created

Starter Scheduled alerts

• All Community tier features, plus:
• Scheduled alerts (set future start dates)
• Date range control (set end dates)
• No recurring alerts

Professional Scheduled alerts

• Same scheduling features as the Starter tier
• Scheduled alerts (set future start dates)
• Date range control (set end dates)
• No recurring alerts

Business Recurring alerts

• All Starter tier features, plus:
• Recurring alerts (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual)
• Unlimited active alerts
• Advanced scheduling options

Tier Limitations

If you downgrade from a higher tier, alerts that use features not available in the lower tier will be disabled. For example, recurring alerts will stop recurring if you downgrade from Business to Professional, Starter, or Community.

Alert Display

Active alerts appear as banners at the top of the dashboard, above the main content. Multiple active alerts are displayed in a stack, with the most severe alerts appearing first.

Display order:

1. Urgent alerts (red)
2. High alerts (orange)
3. Medium alerts (yellow)
4. Low alerts (green)
5. Info alerts (blue)

User interaction:

• Alerts are visible to all authenticated users
• Users cannot dismiss or hide alerts
• Alerts disappear automatically after the end date
• Users can click the link (if provided) to learn more

Multiple alerts:

• If multiple alerts are active, they are displayed in a vertical stack
• Each alert is clearly separated with its own banner
• The most severe alerts appear at the top

Best Practices

Clear Communication:

• Use clear, concise titles that users can understand at a glance
• Provide detailed descriptions with context and next steps
• Include links to status pages or documentation when relevant
• Avoid technical jargon that users may not understand

Appropriate Severity:

• Use severity levels consistently and appropriately
• Reserve urgent and high severity for critical issues
• Overusing high severity reduces impact and creates alert fatigue
• Consider the user impact when choosing severity

Timing:

• Set start dates to give users advance notice when possible
• Set end dates to automatically remove alerts when they’re no longer relevant
• Use recurring alerts for regular events to reduce manual work
• Review and clean up expired alerts regularly

Maintenance Windows:

• Announce maintenance windows at least 24 hours in advance
• Use medium or high severity for planned maintenance
• Include the exact time window and expected duration
• Provide a link to a status page for real-time updates

Incident Communication:

• Use urgent or high severity for active incidents
• Update the alert as the incident progresses
• Include links to incident reports or status pages
• Remove or update the alert when the incident is resolved

Troubleshooting

Alert not appearing:

• Verify the start date is in the past or current
• Check that the alert is active (not expired or deleted)
• Ensure the alert has not been disabled
• Verify you have the appropriate license tier for the features used

Alert not disappearing:

• Check that the end date has passed
• Verify the alert is not set to recur
• Refresh the browser to clear cached alerts
• Check that the server time is correct

Cannot create alert:

• Verify you have administrator privileges
• Check that you have the appropriate license tier
• Ensure all required fields are filled (title, severity, start date, end date)
• Verify the end date is after the start date

Recurring alerts not working:

• Verify you have the Business tier (required for recurrence)
• Check that the recurrence pattern is configured correctly
• Ensure the server time and timezone are correct
• Review the alert configuration for errors

Next Steps

After configuring alerts, proceed to Link Health Monitoring to monitor entity link availability, or Data Directory Structure to understand how Legend stores data.