With Observation Planning Redbex provides a mighty tool for comparing planned observations with the actual observations recorded i.e. the monitoring plan with the actual performed measurements. This can be used to compare actual monitoring work against contractually agreed targets and to plan future monitoring tasks.

Observation Planning also supports sending reminders if your plan is likely to be violated in the near future, this way violations of a monitoring plan can be averted. Reminders are sent using Redbex’ integrated messaging and you can therefore be sent via e-mail or SMS or other media.

Configuring reminders

Observation plan can detect a possible violation when configured properly. A possible violation is a number of observations missing for a time-range. Let’s say a feature has to have 3 observations a week and till Thursday of one week there is only 1 observations recorded so far. Using “observation plan violation reminder” such cases can be found by an automatic job and the pre-defined user(s) or all users in a group can be informed of the missing observations, so responsible users can react.

Observation plan Reminder

The above image explains the timeline with observation plan violation check. The observation plan is weekly plan with 3 observations; means there has to be 3 observations recorded for the given feature every week. The Green line is the time line and blue points are days of week and red points are observations. The example illustrated 4 blocks in 4 weeks. The arrow in the middle shows the current point in time when the plan is executing. In the first block we see there are 2 observation from 3 required, so there is a violation. There is no reminder send as Reminders can only be sent for a likely violation which is most likely to occur sometime in future, when there is already a violation then there is nothing to remind.

On the second week block we see there is no violation. On the third block we see there are two observations and only one day left, which is defined by X(the time left for this block, If running on Thursday midnight the X=1) in the drawing. The logic behind this X is also written
If X >= Min. Response time & X<= Max. Response time
Then a Reminder is sent for as there is a likely violation.
Some example may allow visualizing better:
if X = 1(1 day left for the block of configured weekly plan in this case)

Min. Response time = 1 Day & Max. Response time = 6 day then system will send reminder from day 1 to Day 6. On the seventh day however it will not send reminder.

Understanding response time

As mentions earlier, If a high Max. Response time is chosen then users might get a lot of reminders in the early days of the week, which can be a lot sometimes. There its important to choose a good Max. Response time. Normally it should be negotiated between the system administrator and the end user to agree on some value that suits everyone. It also depends on the Plan duration. If making a monthly observation plan then Max. Response time : 7 days is OK, then the user has enough time to enter the missing values.

Read more about observation planning in the Redbex Reference Manual.