Viewing links between alerts in alert groups in Express List
Summarize
Summary of Viewing links between alerts in alert groups in Express List
Link View in the Express List provides a visual representation of relationships between alerts within alert groups in ServiceNow Event Management. It helps customers quickly understand how alerts relate to configuration items (CIs), probable causes, and impacted services, improving alert triage and root cause analysis.
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Key Features
- Visual Link Representation: Displays alerts and their linked attributes as nodes connected by lines, with colored tags representing CIs and other environment items.
- CMDB Integration: While Link View works without a populated CMDB, having a CMDB enhances visibility by showing probable causes and affected services related to alert groups.
- Interactive Node Management: Users can drag nodes to organize their view, though the layout resets on refresh, which must be done manually to update Link View.
- Node Badging: Nodes include badges to indicate multiple alerts sharing the same key-value pair, and a Change badge highlights active change requests linked as probable alert causes.
- Legend and Filtering: A legend explains symbols, colors, and line types (solid lines indicate shared alerts; dotted lines indicate correlation by grouping criteria). Users can toggle tag visibility to reduce noise.
- Tooltip Details: Hovering over nodes reveals detailed information including tag name, class, severity, alert count, and alert roles (primary, secondary, or probable cause).
- Support for Various Alert Group Types: Link View supports tag-based, rules-based, CMDB-based, network traffic-based, log analytics-based, and mixed alert groups.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
- Facilitates rapid understanding of alert interdependencies and impact on services without requiring full CMDB data, though enhanced with CMDB integration.
- Enables quicker and more effective triage by visually identifying probable causes and related change requests directly within alert groups.
- Improves operational efficiency by allowing users to focus on relevant alert attributes and reduce visual clutter through filtering options.
Gain a better understanding of the relationships between alerts in alert groups in the Express List by using Link View. Link View offers a visual representation of the relationships between the alerts in a group.
When Event Management generates an alert group, Link View shows how the attributes of the alerts in the group are linked. The colored tags represent configuration items (CIs) and other environment items in relation to the alerts.
The information shown in Link View is available without the need for a populated Configuration Management Database (CMDB). However, when the CMDB is populated, Link View offers additional value by providing the probable cause of the alerts and the service that the alert group impacts.
You can focus on your areas of interest by dragging the nodes in Link View to different positions. When you refresh an alert group, rearranged nodes appear in their original position again. Therefore, Link View is not refreshed automatically, but waits for you to do so manually.
If an alert on a CI impacts a service in the Configuration Management Database (CMDB), Link View shows the impacted service, enabling you to view it at a glance for quick triage.
A stacked node indicates that multiple nodes were mapped for the same tag. When the same key-value pair appears in more than one alert, the corresponding node is shown with a badge. For example, when the same key-value pair appears in two alerts, the badge on the node shows the number 2, as seen on the Payment tracker node in the sample alert group figure. When a node has no badge, the key-value pair appears in only one alert. An active change request, a probable cause of the alert, is marked by a Change badge.
The Link View legend lists the meaning of the symbols and colors used and enables you to toggle between hiding and showing types of tags to reduce noise. In addition, the legend describes the meaning of the various lines linking the alert attributes. Attributes linked by a solid line share one or more alerts, whereas attributes linked by a dotted line are correlated by grouping criteria. For a description of each tag, see Attributes in Express List Link View. Hovering over a node displays a tooltip that includes the name of the tag, its class, its severity, the number of alerts in which it appeared, and whether the alert is primary or secondary or the probable cause of the alert, if applicable.
- Viewing links between alerts in tag-based alert groups
- Viewing links between alerts in rules-based alert groups
- Viewing links between alerts in CMDB-based alert groups
- Alert links in network traffic-based alert groups
- Alert links in log analytics-based alert groups
- Viewing links between alerts in mixed alert groups