Getting alerted with a notification when an issue is discovered might for some not be enough when the issue affects very critical infrastructure.
With Reminders you can configure Notifiers to repeat alerting you to serious issues until a fixed time has expired or the Panorama9 system no longer detects the issue.
Reminders are sent using an exponential back-off scheme which means having an increased interval between reminders as time goes by.
The first reminder setting value will dictate how many hours must pass before the first reminder will be sent.
The second value sets the maximum time for how long to keep producing reminders. I.e. this determines when the last reminder is sent. A value of 168 hours is enforced as the maximum reminder repeat.
The interval between reminders is calculated from the first reminder value by multiplying it with the Nth-1 power of 2, where N is the reminder count.
An example: if the first reminder is sent after 24 hours the third (N=3) would be sent after 24 * 2^(3-1) = 96 hours.
Reminder messages are clearly marked as being reminders by having "REMINDER" prefixed in the subject and body.
Help desk integration
If help desk integration is enabled a new ticket will be created with a reference to the original ticket and will also have "REMINDER" prefixed the subject.
Panorama9 will employ ticket linking features found in the help desks if available. Currently ticket linking features exist and is supported in Autotask and Desk.com.
When the originating issue is detected as resolved both the primary ticket as well as reminder tickets are closed automatically.
Important caveats
Note that there are some important caveats to be mindful of:
Reminders are only sent if the issue hasn't been resolved. If an issue is resolved the reminders will stop being sent from that point in time.
Reminders are only activated for issues detected AFTER the reminder setting has been saved on the Notifier. In other words you can't activate reminders on already detected issues.
If you remove a Notification with a reminder setting the system will stop creating further reminders as these are hardwired with the Notification id.
If you turn off the reminder feature on a Notification all current reminders connected with this Notification will stop and no further reminders will be sent. When the issue gets resolved however all associated reminder help desk tickets will still get closed.
If you change the reminder settings on a Notification the current reminders connected with this Notification will follow the new settings. E.g. changing the maximum repeat value will affect existing reminders matching this Notification immediately.