The Notifications Page

Feb 27, 2025

Overview

Notifications are set up to be snapshots of events at particular points in time. They can be generated by various features throughout the platform, with the three main sources being insights, user alerts, and trend forecasts. Each of these are outlined in more detail below. Users can receive notifications via email, text, and the in-platform newsfeed.

Notifications have a severity associated with them - critical, warning, or informational - for ease of distinguishing between urgent and non-urgent events or priorities per facility. Users can subscribe to notifications for certain features and severities and unsubscribe from others, and have some control over the amount of notifications they receive. Each user can be configured to receive the desired notifications from their plant via the Notification Settings tool in the left side menu.

Users can be assigned to notification-generating resources (e.g. trend forecast and user alerts). This does not mean that only they can receive the notifications for it, but instead it provides another degree of granularity and control within the notification settings. For example, users may only want to receive notifications for resources that they are explicitly assigned to, and no others. Admins have control over the notification settings of all users at their plant/company through the user management dashboard. All roles except Operators have permissions to manage their own settings.

Since notifications are considered as snapshots of events at particular points in time, this means that the contents of an event are fixed, therefore they may not reflect the current state of the system. Because of this, notifications generally provide a link to the source of truth where users can view the current and real-time state of the resource.

Current Notifications

The default screen that shows when navigating to the Notifications page is the Current Notifications, which acts as a newsfeed, providing a centralized hub to track and manage various system events, such as user generated alerts, trend forecasting predicted crossings, and any platform generated insights that have been triggered.

Functionality Within Current Notifications

Any notifications that appear in the feed can be expanded to display additional relevant information depending on the notification type. Depending on the type of notification, more information may be available via "See in Overview" or "See in Interactive" buttons.

If a notification is no longer relevant or needed, the "Acknowledge" button will dismiss it. Acknowledged notifications can be displayed by enabling the "Show Acknowledged" filter checkbox.

If a notification needs adjustment for any reason, the "Configure" button within that notification will navigate to the appropriate form to adjust its individual settings. Note that changes will only be reflected in the content and dispatch of future notifications; existing notifications will not be affected.

By default, the Current Notifications page and notification bell will display all notifications from the last 3 months in reverse-chronological order. Filtering options are available to limit notifications to specific severities, types, or statuses. The time frame can be adjusted to a relative lookback period or absolute date. Click the "Reset" button at any time to return to the default settings.

The currently selected filter settings can be used as the new default by clicking the "Save" button. Note that these settings will also apply to the notification bell.

Sources of Notifications

There are three main sources of notifications (also called "resources" within some of the settings tools). Each notification will be labeled with its source/resource type in the top left part of the notification, above the name and details of the notification. Below are some details about each type.

Insights

Insights are system generated, incorporating more complex information, therefore not configured by users. Users cannot be explicitly assigned to receive individual insights, rather, users can opt in to receive the Insight notifications as a category of resource in general. This is set up through the Notification Settings in the left side menu of the Notifications page. Notification Settings are detailed a bit further below.

Editing Insights: Since Insights are system generated rather than user generated, the Configure option goes to our article on Submitting a Support Ticket, prompting users to submit a ticket to request the Pani team help with making the necessary edits.

User Alerts

Users can configure alerts on sensors or KPIs. Upper and lower limits can be specified, and an alert is triggered when either limit is crossed. Users can be assigned to the alert, and can also specify an action to be taken.

Editing User Alerts: These alerts can be configured in the "Alert Builder" tool in the left side menu of the page.

Trend Forecasts

Users can configure alerts on the trend forecasts built and displayed in Overview views (also known as dashboards). Trend forecast alerts can incorporate specific upper and lower thresholds, as well as the severity of the alert, at a given number of days before the expected threshold crossing, and an action to be performed. Additionally, users can be assigned to receive each trend forecast alert.

Editing Trend Forecast alerts: Trend Forecast alerts can be configured in the "Trend Forecast Notifications Builder" tool on the left side menu of the Notifications page.

Late Measurement Data Notifications

Users can also configure alerts for late or missing data from either manual data entry forms or automatic telemetry data. Late measurement data alerts can be configured to trigger for specific metrics within workflows, after a specified number of hours or weeks (minimum 1 hour). When setting up, the severity of the alert can be Critical, Warning, or Info level, and a description can be added to provide instructions for the recipient. All user roles except Opertor roles can create Late Measurement Data alert. All user roles can be assigned to receive these alerts.

To set up Late Measurement Data alert notifications, simply follow these steps:

1. On the Data page, select the relevant Workflow from the left side bar, click the ellipses ... icon button in the upper right part of the screen and select the Late data notification

2. In the pop-up modal, fill in the form fields to configure the desired notification: the relevant metric, the time frame, severity, action text, and assignees, then Save

3. Once the new notification is saved, you can view and edit it from the Notifications page, within the Late Data Alert Builder found in the left side bar menu.

Note: all fields except the metric can be edited from this Builder. To edit the metric, use the original modal from the Workflow on the Data page.

Once created, these notifications will appear in the main Current Notifications newsfeed, and can be filtered in or out by using checkbox under Notification Type Options in the upper settings bar.

Get SMS Notifications for Alerts

Now you can opt to receive text messages for certain notifications of your choice.

Supports all notification types: user-created alerts, insights, trend forecasts, late data alerts
Configuration options: which notification types, which levels (critical, warning, info), when to notify (e.g immediately), and frequency (e.g as often as possible or 1 per 8hrs per type)
East for account admins to set up. To do this, navigate to the company-wide user management page. Then select 'manage users at X plant'. Now you will be able to change operators' notifications settings for that plant.

Pro-tip: Critical alerts to SMS could be a down-time saver - if you're on the road or away from your desk, find out right away so you can respond as soon as possible.

New: Smarter alerts, only after a certain time spent outside of thresholds

Now you can set up alerts that will only trigger after a specified duration of time spent above or below the thresholds. This custom delay alert activation option is now in the Alert Builder tool.

Beyond simple binary 'crossed/not crossed SCADA alerts, adding a layer of consideration - not just crossed, but stayed crossed for a certain amount of time (minutes, hours, days)
Reduce potential 'false alarm' anomaly alerts (like in the example below)
Fewer unnecessary alerts means less notification fatigue for those that receive many alerts, like managers, supervisors and analysts.

Example: say you're in the middle of a CIP, you reverse the flow, and that triggers a sensor for a crazy value. If the CIP takes 20 mins, then you can set the alert up to only notify after that threshold remains closed for more than 25 mins.

Notification Settings

The Notification Settings tool in the left side menu of the Notifications page allows users to configure who receives which notifications by email, and when.

Notifications (resources) are separately configurable for every resource type at each severity level.
Users may opt out of notifications by selecting "Never" under the "When to Notify" sub-column.
If opted in to a notification, the frequency of delivery can be tuned to limit the total number received.
If a notification is omitted in this way, it will still be captured separately in the Current Notifications page.

Users assigned to a resource cannot opt entirely out of receiving notifications produced by it, but they can configure the frequency. If a resource's notification is no longer relevant to a user, remove that user from the assignees list using the appropriate resource management feature. For example, if an Alert is no longer relevant, select the Alert in the Alert Builder tool and click the "Select Assignees" button.

Note: Operators do not have configuration access and must have their settings configured by an Admin through the User Management page