Updated: October 17, 2023

Troubleshooting notifications

It is common to have to troubleshoot notifications, most commonly, "Why was I not notified?" There are several areas within N-able N-central to check to determine why a notification was not received. New notifications are triggered on state changes; escalation and repeat notifications are triggered on elapsed time from the initial state change.

A service must first enter a normal state in order to trigger a notification. For example, a newly added service which first enters No Data, then Failed state will not trigger a notification.

The following sections provide techniques you can use to troubleshoot issues you may encounter with notifications.

Run the Incident Summary report

  1. At the Customer level, click Reports > Events and select Incident Summary.
  2. Select the Period length, and Start Date and Time covering the missing notification, and click View Report.

N-able N-central generates a list of all the notifiable incidents and associated escalations, acknowledgment, and resolution time information for this period. If the incident is listed in this report, then N-able N-central detected a state change of a service that is associated with a notification profile.

Run the Notifications Sent report

  1. At the Customer level, click Reports > Events and select Notifications Sent.
  2. Select the Period length, Start Date and Time covering the missing notification, and the recipients of the notification, and click View Report.

N-able N-central displays a list of all notifications sent to the specific recipients. If the notification is listed in this report then N-able N-central sent the notification. If not:

  • Check the mail relay server settings in the NAC.
  • Check that the message is not stuck in the mail relay server.
  • Check the user’s spam filter.

Check the user's notification method

The notification method is where you configure a user's email address for use with notifications and the associated schedule for receiving notifications.

  1. Click Administration > User Management > User and select the user account that should have received the notification.
  2. Verify the email address is correct.
  3. Verify the schedule includes the time the incident occurred.

If the incident occurred outside the user’s schedule, the incident will be listed in the Incident Summary report and no notification will be listed in the Notification Sent report.

Send test notification

  1. At the Customer level, click Views > All Devices and click the name of the device.
  2. Click Monitoring > Associations.
  3. Verify the proper notification profiles are associated with the device.
  4. Click the Status tab and select the appropriate service.
  5. Click the Thresholds tab and reverse one of the thresholds and click OK.
  6. Click the Overview tab, and wait for the incident and the notification.

Run the Detailed Status report

  1. At the customer level, click Reports > Availability > Detailed Status.
  2. Select the Start Date and Time covering the missing notification, Device and Service, and click View Report.

A detailed overview of the service state changes on the device during the selected period is displayed.

  • Verify the time of the incident whether the service was in a failed state.
  • If it was in a failed state, go to the next step below and verify how long it was in a failed state.
  • If it was not in a failed state, go to the next step below and verify the metric values to determine if the thresholds are set correctly.

Raw Monitored Data report

  1. At the customer level, click Reports > Metrics > Raw Monitored Data.
  2. Select the Service and Device, and click View Report.

Detailed information for this particular service and device is displayed.

  • Scan for the time frame when you expected an incident.
  • Check how long the service was in a failed state.
  • Note the duration that the service was in a failed state.

Notification Profile Delay

Each notification profile has a delay period, which is the amount of time a service must be in a state before sending the notification. Check if the duration noted in the previous step exceeded the delay in the profile.