Overview
This topic describes how to use calendars in QMessage Monitor to make notifications dependent on the current date and time. This is based on the required message having an auto-reply record created for it, which has an escalation procedure defined to notify the correct person based on their availability, which is controlled by an escalation calendar.
A calendar rule is similar to an appointment in Microsoft Outlook, in that it describes either a single interval (“May 22, 2015, from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.”) or the repetition of such an interval (“every last Friday in a month”). An Escalation Calendar is a set of calendar rules linked together with include/exclude switches for each rule. The rules can be applied at the level of the escalation user or the notification route.
Calendar Rules
We'll use an example of an employee on 24-hour call to illustrate how to use calendar rules. During office hours he only wants to be notified of problems via email, but outside office hours he needs to be notified of problems via his mobile phone.
To achieve this, we'll use three calendar rules and two calendars to cover the three time periods and the two sets of operational periods involved. The calendars will then be attached to the notification routes on the escalation user to provide the relevant notification mechanism at the required time.
The first rule to create is for the period covering midnight until 9 a.m. Note the Start Time, Duration, and Recurrence settings:
The second rule is for the period covering 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.:
The third rule is for the period covering 5 p.m. back to midnight. All three rules together will now cover the twenty-four hour period:
Calendars
The first calendar covers the normal office hours; note the single rule:
The second calendar covers the out of office working hours; note the two rules and the difference when you select the Preview tab:
Escalation User
The escalation user can have a calendar attached at the top level if required, but we will be attaching it at the Notification Route level:
The first Notification Route has now been configured to send an email during normal office hours:
The second Notification Route has now been configured to send a message to the mobile phone during out of office hours:
Summary
Using the configuration detailed above will allow a single escalation user, to receive notifications via a mixture of different methods across a variety of time periods.
