View source for New/Properties: Watch Item : Alarm

==Description== 
The "Alarm Tab" shows the settings of which an alarm will either be triggered or reset.

An alarm is triggered when a watch item fails. See [[Failure Descriptions]] for more for more on why watch items fail.

==Fields and Buttons==

===Trigger===

* '''Active''' - Trigger alarm action when a run fails. By default, this option is checked/active. *WARNING* Un-checking this option will prevent an alarm ever from being triggered.
* '''Action''' - Opens the "Set Alarm Actions" dialog box. There are four types of actions that can be performed:
** [[Action: Send an Email]]
** [[Action: Show a visual alert window]]
** [[Action: Execute a command (.exe) or load a URL]]
** [[Action: Play a wave file sound]]
* '''User Trigger Escalation Rules''' - (Trial and Enterprise only) Escalation Rules offer a deeper level of configuration for triggering alarm actions. Check this option to use trigger escalation rules and to enable the "Configure Rules" button.
* '''Configure Rules''' - Click this button to open the "[ConfigureEscalationRules.html Configure Escalation Rules]" dialog.

===Number of consecutive failed responses to trigger alarm===

* By default, this field is set to 1.
* You may want set the trigger to 2 or more consecutive failures in the event of a false alarm. <br />Consider this scenario. You set up a watch to ping your site every minute. You set the alarm trigger at 5 consecutive failures. That would mean that you only want to be notified if your site is actually down for a full five minutes.

===Reset Alarm when this item responds again. (If this box is unchecked, the alarm will need to be reset manually)===

* By default, this option is checked/active.
* To manually reset an alarm, in the main window, under the menu "Edit", click on the menu option "Reset Alarm".
* It may be useful to uncheck this option if you only want an alarm to be reset with total human intervention.

===Number of consecutive successful responses to automatically reset alarm===

* By default, this field is set to 1.
* You may want set the trigger to 2 or more consecutive failures in the event of a false reset of an alarm. <br />Consider this scenario. You set up a watch to ping your site every minute. You set the alarm trigger at 5 consecutive successful responses. That would mean that you only want the alarm to be reset when the site is responding for a full five minutes.

===Screenshot===
====WebWatchBot Manager====
http://poorperformance.com/wiki/images/onlinehelp/watch_item_alarm.gif
====WebWatchBot Online====
http://poorperformance.com/wiki/images/onlinehelp/wwb-online/Explorer/watchitem/alarm.jpg