Triggers

How you create a trigger differs depending on the monitor method selected when the monitor was created. The monitor methods are Visual editor, Extraction query editor, and Anomaly detector. Learn more about each type in the following sections.

Creating triggers

To create a trigger:

1. In the Create monitor window, select Add trigger.
2. Enter the trigger name, severity level, and trigger condition. Severity levels, which range from 1 (highest) to 5 (lowest) help manage alerts. For example, a trigger with a high severity level (for example, 1 or 2) may notify a specific individual, whereas a trigger with a low severity level (4 or 5) might notify a chat room. Trigger conditions include “IS ABOVE,” “IS BELOW,” and “IS EXACTLY.”

Query-level monitors run your trigger’s script once against the query’s results, and bucket-level monitors run your trigger’s script on each bucket. Create a trigger that best fits the monitor method. To run multiple scripts, you must create multiple triggers.

Visual editor

For a query-level monitor’s trigger condition, specify a threshold for the aggregation and time frame you chose when you created the monitor (for example, “IS BELOW 1,000” or “IS EXACTLY 10”). The line moves up and down as you increase or decrease the threshold. Once this line is crossed, the trigger evaluates to true.

For a bucket-level monitor, you must specify a threshold and value for the aggregation and time frame. You can use a maximum of five conditions to refine your trigger. Optionally, you can also use a keyword filter to filter for a specific field in your index.

For document-level monitors, use tags that represent multiple queries connected by the logical OR operator. To create a multiple-query trigger:

1. Select Per document monitor.
2. Select a data source.
3. Enter the query name and field information. For example, set the query to search for the region field with either the operator “is” or “is not” and the value “us-west-2”.
4. Select Add tag and enter a tag name.
5. Create the second query by selecting Add another query and add the same tag to it.

Now you can create the trigger condition and specify the tag name. This creates a combination trigger that checks two queries that both contain the same tag. The monitor checks both queries with a logical OR operation, and if either query’s conditions are met, the alert notification is generated.

Extraction query editor

For a query-level monitor, specify a Painless script that returns true or false. Painless is the default OpenSearch scripting language and has a syntax similar to Groovy.

Trigger condition scripts revolve around the ctx.results[0] variable, which corresponds to the extraction query response. For example, the script might reference ctx.results[0].hits.total.value or ctx.results[0].hits.hits[i]._source.error_code.

A return value of true means that the trigger condition has been met and the trigger should run its actions. Test the script using the Run button.

The Info link next to Trigger condition contains a useful summary of the variables and results available to your query.

Bucket-level monitors require you to specify more information in your trigger condition. At a minimum, you must have the following fields:

• buckets_path: Maps variable names to metrics to use in your script.
• parent_bucket_path: The path to a multi-bucket aggregation. The path can include single-bucket aggregations, but the last aggregation must be multi-bucket. For example, if you have a pipeline such as agg1>agg2>agg3, agg1 and agg2 are single-bucket aggregations, but agg3 must be a multi-bucket aggregation.
• script: The script that OpenSearch runs to evaluate whether to trigger any alerts.

The following is an example script:

{
  "buckets_path": {
    "count_var": "_count"
  },
  "parent_bucket_path": "composite_agg",
  "script": {
    "source": "params.count_var > 5"
  }
}

After mapping the count_var variable to the _count metric, you can use count_var in your script and reference _count data. The composite_agg is a path to a multi-bucket aggregation.

Anomaly detector

To use the anomaly detector method:

1. For Trigger type, choose Anomaly detector grade and confidence.
2. Specify the Anomaly grade condition for the aggregation and time frame you chose when you created the monitor, for example, “IS ABOVE 0.7” or “IS EXACTLY 0.5.” The anomaly grade is a number between 0 and 1 that indicates how anomalous a data point is.
3. Specify the Anomaly confidence condition for the aggregation and time frame you chose earlier, “IS ABOVE 0.7” or “IS EXACTLY 0.5.” The anomaly confidence is an estimate of the probability that the reported anomaly grade matches the expected anomaly grade. The line moves up and down as you increase and decrease the threshold. Once this line is crossed, the trigger evaluates to true.

Sample scripts

// Evaluates to true if the query returned any documents
ctx.results[0].hits.total.value > 0

// Returns true if the avg_cpu aggregation exceeds 90
if (ctx.results[0].aggregations.avg_cpu.value > 90) {
  return true;
}

// Performs some crude custom scoring and returns true if that score exceeds a certain value
int score = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < ctx.results[0].hits.hits.length; i++) {
  // Weighs 500 errors 10 times as heavily as 503 errors
  if (ctx.results[0].hits.hits[i]._source.http_status_code == "500") {
    score += 10;
  } else if (ctx.results[0].hits.hits[i]._source.http_status_code == "503") {
    score += 1;
  }
}
if (score > 99) {
  return true;
} else {
  return false;
}

Trigger variables

Other variables

The associated_queries and sample_documents variables

Per bucket and per document monitors support printing sample documents in notification messages. Per document monitors support printing the list of queries that triggered the creation of the finding associated with the alert. When the monitor runs, it adds each new alert to the ctx variables, for example, newAlerts for per bucket monitors and alerts for per document monitors. Each alert has its own list of sample_documents, and each per document monitor alert has its own list of associated_queries. The message template can be formatted to iterate through the list of alerts, the list of associated_queries, and the sample_documents for each alert.

An alerting monitor uses the permissions of the user that created it. Be mindful of the Notifications plugin channel to which alert messages are sent and the content of the message mustache template. To learn more about security in the Alerting plugin, see Alerting security.

Sample document variables

Mustache template example

Alerts:
{{#ctx.alerts}}
    RULES
    {{#associated_queries}}
        Name: {{name}}
        Id: {{id}}
        Tags: {{tags}}
    ------------------------
    {{/associated_queries}}
{{/ctx.alerts}}

Associated query variables

Mustache template example

The _source object in this example is based on the opensearch_dashboards_sample_data_ecommerce index available in OpenSearch Dashboards. In this example, the message template is accessing the ctx.alerts variable of a per document monitor.

Alerts
{{#ctx.alerts}}
    Sample documents:
    {{#sample_documents}}
        Index: {{_index}}
        Document ID: {{_id}}
        Order date: {{_source.order_date}}
        Order ID: {{_source.order_id}}
        Clothing category: {{_source.category}}
        -----------------
    {{/sample_documents}}
{{/ctx.alerts}}