The StatusDashboard email notification method allows users to subscribe to email alerts for one or more services, which can be triggered whenever creating or updating events. The email notification method configuration settings include global settings and status dashboard specific settings, both of which are described below:
Global Settings
Global email settings apply globally to a StatusDashboard account, including any status dashboards.
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Option |
Description |
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Custom Content |
Notifications > Email > Global Options > Custom Content Email Subject If a default email subject is included (either incident or maintenance), that subject will be included as the event email subject when you initially create an event. Whether or not you add a default email subject, you will still be able to customize the email subject whenever creating or updating an event. If you do not create a custom email subject when creating or updating an event, then the default email subject format will be used: Incident Alert|Maintenance Notification: #{Event ID} |
| Email Addresses |
A listing of all email addresses that are subscribed to notifications for services on one or more status dashboards. Email addresses can also be tagged with notification tags which allow recipient lists for certain events to be constrained. |
| Notifications |
Notifications > Email > Global Options > Notifications Enable / Disable Email Notifications When this option is disabled, the option to broadcast email messages when creating or updating events will not be available to StatusDashboard administrators but new email subscriptions to status dashboards will still be processed. Note: If your StatusDashboard account has reached the maximum number of allowed email messages for the current month, the broadcast email option will not be available when managing events.
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| Rejection Blacklist |
Notifications > Email > Global Options > Rejection Blacklist When a recipient mail system bounces or marks an event notification email as spam, StatusDashboard will refuse to send more email to that recipient for a certain period of time (they are blacklisted), based on how many times the recipient has bounced or complained and how serious the issue is. You can remove email addresses from the blacklist, but please only do so after the receiving issue has been corrected. |
| SMTP Sender IP |
Notifications > Email > Global Options > SMTP Sender IP A listing of the SMTP IP addresses from which all StatusDashboard event emails will be sent. Customers who wish to use dedicated SMTP IP addresses, instead of the StatusDashboard shared pool, should contact customer support. |
Status Dashboard Settings
Status dashboard email settings apply to specific status dashboards (i.e. each status dashboard within an account has its own specific email settings.
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Option |
Description |
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Custom Content |
Notifications > Email > Dashboard Options > Custom Content > [Dashboard] Email Sender This is the friendly name that will appear in the from field in the customer's email client when they receive event email messages (for example: Acme Widgets) Email Recipient Customize the display of the email recipient for each event email that is sent from StatusDashboard. Currently, the only email recipient customization option is the BCC recipient option. When this option is selected, the email recipient will be blind carbon copied (BCC) and no visible TO recipient will be included in the email message. Email Greeting Incident Greeting This text will appear above the event information that is broadcast in each event email. This could be a generic greeting, or an explanation of why these messages are sent. A suggested example is shown below: Dear Acme company, the purpose of this message is to inform/update you about a service disruption that is impacting one or more production services. We are actively working to resolve the issue and will notify you about any significant changes. All current information about the incident is shown below: Maintenance Greeting Similar to the Incident Greeting Text, this is a message that will accompany all maintenance event emails. A suggested example is shown below: Dear Acme company, the purpose of this message is to inform/update you about planned maintenance activities within our technical infrastructure. All current information about the planned maintenance is shown below. We will actively communicate any updates to these planned maintenance activities. Email Signature Any text entered here will be added to the signature section (after all event detail) of each email message. |
| Dashboard Subscription |
Notifications > Email > Dashboard Options > Dashboard Subscription > [Dashboard] Enable / Disable Email Subscriptions When this option is disabled, the email subscription option will not be available on the status dashboard. Note: If the account has reached the maximum number of email subscribers allowed, the email subscription option will not be available on any dashboard subscription pages.
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| Domain Whitelist |
Notifications > Email > Dashboard Options > Domain Whitelist > [Dashboard] Restrict email subscriptions to the status dashboard to specific email domains (e.g. your corporate email domain), by creating an email domain whitelist. Once an email domain whitelist is created and activated, only email addresses with domains that are part of the active whitelist will be allowed to subscribe to event email notifications. Email domains should include only the domain portion of an email address (e.g. domain.com). |
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Template |
Notifications > Email > Dashboard Options > Template > [Dashboard] The event email formatting can be customized by selecting an email template, custom color scheme (for incidents and maintenance events) and an organizational logo. Once customized, all event emails sent from StatusDashboard will be appropriately formatted, based on the event type. |
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Whitelabel |
Notifications > Email > Dashboard Options > Whitelabel > [Dashboard] Enable / Disable StatusDashboard Branding When disabled, the 'Powered by StatusDashboard' branding that appears in the footer of subscription/event emails will be removed. Reply-To Email Address This is the email address that subscription and event email messages will be sent from, and if your customers reply to these messages, they will be sent to this email address. If you would like to use a reply-to email address, we must first verify that you have all of the proper settings in place in your domain's DNS zone file - please review our Reply-To Address setup instructions for details. Organizational Mailing Address |
Managing Email Subscriptions
The following options are available for managing email subscriptions, all of which are specific to individual status dashboards.
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End Users |
Subscribe Navigate to the status dashboard, click the Subscribe button on the dashboard page and select the email icon. Enter a valid email address and select one or more services to subscribe to. We'll send a confirmation email with a validation link which when clicked, will confirm the subscriptions. Once confirmed, the email address will be subscribed to event emails and will receive any relevant alerts that you broadcast when managing events. Manage Subscriptions Navigate to the dashboard, click the Subscribe button on the dashboard page, select the email icon, click the manage button and provide a valid email address. We'll send a validation email which will provide access to add and/or delete subscriptions to specific services on the dashboard. |
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StatusDashboard Administrators |
Manual Subscribe Navigate to Notifications > Email> Dashboard Options > Subscribers > [Dashboard] and clicking the plus icon. Any email addresses added here will be immediately subscribed to the associated services. Please be aware that these manually added email addresses can be unsubscribed from alerts through the standard StatusDashboard unsubscribe process by your end users unless they are set to locked. Import Subscribers Email subscribers can be imported from a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file by navigating to Notifications > Email> Dashboard Options > Subscribers > [Dashboard] and clicking the import icon. There are two options when importing subscribers:
When importing email subscribers from a CSV file, all existing email subscriptions will be removed and replaced with the entries in the CSV file. If you have existing email subscriptions and are interested in importing additional subscriptions, it is best to first export your current subscriber list, add the additional entries to the export file, and then use this file to perform the import. The CSV file must be in the following format and must be a UTF-8 encoded file if it contains non-ASCII characters: Email Address / Service File Format: Email Address,Service Name test1@email.com,service1 test1@email.com,service2 test2@email.com,service1 test2@email.com,service2 Although when exporting the email/service list there are additional columns present, these columns are not required for the import, and are ignored if present. All imported subscriber entries are automatically added with confirmation status set to True and locked status set to False. Email Address File Format: Email Address test1@email.com test2@email.com If errors are encountered during the import of email subscribers, remove the first row (the one with the column headers) and retry the import. Manage Subscriptions Navigate to Notifications > Email> Dashboard Options > Subscribers > [Dashboard]. From here, you can search subscribers, unsubscribe subscribers, confirm unconfirmed subscriptions, delete subscriptions and import/export the list of email subscribers. |
Locked Email Addresses
Email addresses can be set to locked by StatusDashboard administrators which prevents end users from managing subscriptions for those email addresses, or unsubscribing those email addresses from alerts. This can be helpful if you have subscribed internal email distribution lists to notifications, and you do not want end users unsubscribing or otherwise managing subscriptions for those distribution lists. Email addresses can be set to locked by navigating to the list of email subscriptions for a dashboard here: Notifications > Email> Dashboard Options > Subscribers > [Dashboard]. Select any subscription in the list and click the lock/unlock icons in the toolbar to lock or unlock the email addresses.
Notification Method Limits
The StatusDashboard email notification method has the following subscriber/message limits:
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Subscriber Limits |
You can review how many confirmed email subscribers you have by navigating to Notifications > Email and viewing the email subscribers information field. |
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Message Limits |
You can review how many email messages you have sent in the current month by navigating to Notifications > Email and viewing the email messages sent information field. |
Delivery Errors
If you would like to be notified of errors in the delivery of email notification messages, you can subscribe to receive email notification alerts. Once subscribed, we'll quickly notify you if we experience any errors that would indicate a problem with email delivery to your organization, or to your customers. The criteria for error notification are as follows:
- Hard bounces greater than 10% of sent email within a 24 hour period.
- Soft bounces greater than 10% of sent email within a 24 hour period.
- Rejected email greater than 10% of sent email within a 24 hour period.
If an error alert is triggered for one of the above criteria, we will notify you once every six hours until resolved. To subscribe to alerts, navigate to User Profile > User Profile Options > Notifications > Notification Errors.
Email Delivery Reports
StatusDashboard maintains a record of every email message sent including the delivery status (for example, 'sent'). If you would like to review a record of sent emails for your account, you may do so by navigating to Notifications > Email > Global Options > Delivery Report. Once we send a message, if we receive updated information on its delivery status from recipient SMTP servers, we will update the appropriate record in our system. Click on the information icon to view detailed information about the message, including any relevant SMTP events.