Getting access to data on-demand via beautifully crafted reports and dashboards is great and what we excel in. However, you sometimes need to be on top of changes in important metrics even if you are not looking at your dashboard.

The Alerts plugin is a highly beneficial reactive tool which sends you an email when metrics related to a specific condition on session, event, crash analytics, or ratings are met.

Why Use Alerts?

Alerts is a very helpful feature that lets you get information about immediate changes in your data in relation to a given condition, triggering a notification when there is something that needs your attention. It is a simple but effective mechanism to know right away about changes such as an increase/decrease in new users, occurrence count of an event, new crashes/errors, or changes in user ratings for a new feature or page.
With Alerts, you can quickly identify where to intervene and solve problems that your users are experiencing. For example, you released a new version but there may always be bugs that may have run out of sight even though the tests went smoothly. Some bugs may even be so critical that they may prevent your users from using the application. Setting an Alert that allows you to identify such situations can be a lifesaver.

Getting Started

First of all, make sure the Alerts plugin is enabled. To do so, in the main Countly Dashboard, go to Management > Plugins and enable the Alerts toggle.

After that, you will find Cohorts in the Explore section of your Countly Dashboard, under the Users category.

The Alerts screen displays a dashboard with current statistics, a Create New Alert button, and a list with the all the alerts created and which your user has permission to view. Each alert has a toggle button to disable it, as well as a 3-dot ellipsis menu to Edit or Delete it.

Setting Up an Alert

Setting an Alert on Countly has 4 simple and easy steps:

1. Click on the Create New Alert button.
2. Define the data type you want to create an Alert for. This can be either an Event, a Metric, a Crash, or a Rating.
3. Then, determine the application for which the data selected is relevant and the conditions that will trigger the alert. 
4. Save the Alert. Note that each field is mandatory, so a selection must be made in all of them in order for the Create a New Alert button to be enabled.

Your new alert will be displayed in the Alerts table. From now on, you are going to get an email comparing the values from today with those from yesterday, but only if an Alert is triggered. If your alert is stopped by disabling the toggle button, you will stop receiving alerts

Alerts Use Cases Examples

Crashes/Errors

Let's say you have an e-commerce application and you are going to release a new version in September. There are errors you know about in your application and these errors are not reflected in your users or do not interfere with the usage of the application.

An e-commerce application can display a lot of products and the number of screens can be quite large. You may not be able to pass all the pages through the testing process, and there may be a bug that you have not experienced on pages you have not tested yet. The screenshot below shows how you can define an alert when a new crash occurs.

In another example, the error/crash rate is starting to increase and most of your users are affected in an application for which you have just released a new version. If there is an increase of more than 10% in an existing crash rate, you need to identify the problem quickly and solve it.

Ratings

Do not forget that dissatisfied customers can have a very critical impact on your product, which is of course negative. Conversely, changes to your product can be reflected positively on your audience satisfaction. Let’s see how Alerts can be deployed to let you know changes in Ratings.
Suppose you have released a new version of your Mobile Application. You already know how many of your customers are “Very Satisfied” but you want to make sure that the new version does not negatively impact their satisfaction. You can set an alert to be triggered if there is a 10% drop in your “Very Satisfied” clients.

Events

Let’s say you have launched a campaign on your eCommerce website. You can define a clickable call to action as a specific event for the campaign and you want to instantly observe the change in click rates. Having an interest in this campaign may indicate that you need to increase the product in your stocks.

A 20% increase in a specific event will give you a useful insight:

Another situation is when the on-screen location of the campaign you define is the best spot for your users to be reached, and you can showcase nearby other products you want to promote.

The number of users using your product is an important metric to follow, as well. A decreasing user count may indicate a need for a field or a new feature that you need to develop.

For example, a decrease in the number of users on an eCommerce website will most likely have a negative impact on sales, and the ongoing decrease will affect your business at a critical level in the long run. To always be on top of both situations, you can create an alert in the early stages and create an alert for when urgent action is needed.