Making Critical Incidents Impossible to Ignore

00:00:08: If you want to make your life easier, Make sure that what you receive at NICE is relevant.

00:00:13: The categories help us a lot especially to split which one are critical versus like the normal ones.

00:00:20: Makes signal for the umbrella makes it simpler and more efficient than having to play around in different platform.

00:00:30: Welcome to another episode of the DIRDAC podcast Your source for insights into modern incident alerting & response For Critical Operations.

00:00:38: In today's Episode Doreen Jacoby from Durdak is joined by Henri-Paul Bourassault, solution architect at Exo in Canada to discuss how SignalFour helps organizations cut through alert noise and turn chaos into

00:00:50: meaningful

00:00:51: actionable notifications.

00:00:53: Discover How Intelligent Alerting ensures teams are only woken up when it truly matters improving response times reducing fatigue and keeping critical operations running smoothly.

00:01:04: enjoy listening

00:01:08: Hi Ari, very nice to have you on board here today for our podcast around alerting an incident response solutions.

00:01:18: Let's jump right into it!

00:01:23: So yes, hi Doreen.

00:01:25: My name is Henry Paul so I'm from Canada.

00:01:28: i've been in IT for over twenty five years and we have been using SCUM in the company that Im working on which is EXO where I live its Montreal.

00:01:35: so it's a transportation company of the greater Montreal .I am the RIT administrator at this company.

00:01:42: We were looking for good solutions to help us with our alerting incidents at night.

00:01:49: You mentioned you are using SCOM, so let's just go to that starting point.

00:01:56: So for those of you who don't know which I don't think will be a lot of people about SCOM is Microsoft monitoring solution?

00:02:04: You had a monitoring solution in place and discovered certain things were missing some people call it like came across pain points or you have certain needs.

00:02:14: can we talk little bit?

00:02:16: what made your look for the solution?

00:02:20: Scum is a great solution for certain things.

00:02:23: It's great for Microsoft monitoring certain things, but it lacking in some aspect.

00:02:29: and scum Is only alerting you once?

00:02:32: And he doesn't have any escalation.

00:02:34: so So most of the time during the night people were like saying that well I didn't get what I did wake up because at an ear the notification Because this week is way after the good old pager.

00:02:47: so people had moved to email and that little being at night wasn't good enough to wake you up.

00:02:54: So we were looking for something that will do, in between the solution we had in place... ...and the alerting of a guy who was at night needed to be waking-up….

00:03:07: …and also an manager could follow if they weren't waking him up at night to take care of his alert.

00:03:16: At the internet there were some script for that, but we tried it.

00:03:22: It wasn't great and working as expected.

00:03:26: And then we did additional research.

00:03:28: We found DERDAQ signal four which offer multiple features after looking at them Covering multiple aspects of what they are looking for.

00:03:42: The escalation... well alerting.

00:03:46: So from anywhere, and just to mention that each of the operator has their ability to be notified.

00:03:55: I think it's four or five different channels.

00:03:58: so all that was very good for them to select what is a good recipe and especially now with Signal for you can also add the aspect of, The first is email.

00:04:11: if within one minute or two I didn't reply.

00:04:14: You can alert me on a different channel so he can escalate yourself before your manager get in touch and call you which it's something that we don't want to.

00:04:24: So all that covered.

00:04:28: this was like great addition.

00:04:31: Yes have many other things but i think the most important pinpoint that we wanted to cover.

00:04:39: When we talk about how your teams are set up and why something like that would even be an issue, because some people might argue.

00:04:45: And they may say yeah but we have scum!

00:04:48: We can look at a dashboard... ...and see what's going on.

00:04:52: so I don't know Why do you need to add this mobile aspect of it?

00:04:56: Or as we refered to it- You just mentioned the alerting from anywhere.

00:05:08: people might say, hey we have a call center et cetera.

00:05:10: So how is your particular operation set up that made something like this so important to you?

00:05:17: Because we're deserving critical application that required twenty-four seven monitoring.

00:05:23: Those applications were very critical and minutes were critical.

00:05:28: That's why if somebody wasn't waking up at night the chain of didn't wake up at night.

00:05:38: So, well just to reply that I didn't hear the ding it wasn't a good answer.

00:05:44: so on top of that we had to come up with a solution for preventing this and i was trying explain why do you need something?

00:05:59: because scum only alerts once.

00:06:03: When it's done once, It doesn't keep alerting you because in his mind which is designed for its only a later new ones.

00:06:11: But at least with signal four as long as the person didn't acknowledge the alert He will get bombarded and it's almost like a meme.

00:06:19: It's a good mean Because

00:06:22: I liked that comparison.

00:06:23: yeah

00:06:23: Yeah, because they know because at one point this was a signal force calling You because some people were getting voice call at night because he had enabled all the channel.

00:06:32: So it was like, when they knew that the system is calling you because you had missed all of your previous ones.

00:06:40: That's why it became a meme.

00:06:42: Signal for is make sure to wake up at night and if something funny or even the operator's wife that was monitoring... Because I think signal four is called mute.

00:06:58: so better answer now!

00:07:00: I need to sleep.

00:07:03: Well, as long it wasn't like you know some kind of jealousy related to that and sequel four became a woman.

00:07:08: I'm okay with it But this is a very good reference because she also said that you had to argue With your management at the time why?

00:07:15: You would need something on top And i think This Is A Good Reference There For People Listening That Sometimes You're Not Even Aware Of The Gaps That You Have Until You Know You Need To Report On Certain Things Or things Go Terribly Wrong And of course you want to avoid that at all costs.

00:07:34: So, um... That's a great reference and yeah I like the funny aspect there about signal four is calling.

00:07:43: The use cases that you guys have set up right now maybe go past the pain points in what we were originally looking for.

00:07:51: so how are using this solution?

00:07:53: What are teams doing with it?

00:07:55: Well Right Now We Are Integrating Multi Platforms That Converge All To Signal Four to refer back what I was saying at the beginning.

00:08:05: Because it's a beginning, they were getting lots of alerts because their system is new and nothing was fully tweaked.

00:08:13: but things got in the system and signaled.

00:08:16: for you have abilities on creating rules which has reduced the amount of alerts that guys receive at night And the wife or app here are receiving less and less.

00:08:29: So with signal four, at least you have the abilities of creating those rules between nine and five.

00:08:36: And one night.

00:08:37: so we have introduced because were not like in normal teams where are like you have The monitoring guy for telecom one for servers One for each of this single aspect.

00:08:50: at night it's one guy that answer for all For all the alerts during that day.

00:08:57: It's plus and cross yeah, so That's why we made his life easier with signal four.

00:09:03: So it was a ring.

00:09:03: today each of the different team receive is own alerts.

00:09:07: We take they took care of their own alert.

00:09:09: but at night At least we have focus only on the critical Alerts.

00:09:13: or at night?

00:09:14: It's everything in silence except for the critical alerts.

00:09:18: But please sorry you received way less.

00:09:22: And now if everybody's happy and the system is just keep improving.

00:09:28: That's great!

00:09:38: Have you had any feedback from these lucky guys?

00:09:41: Are YOU maybe one of them?

00:09:43: sometimes too, do you rotate in or are you out...

00:09:50: I used to be on the loop now but I understand their context, so understand what they're like experiencing at night and everything.

00:10:00: So that's why I'm trying to make your life easier in this way Like i'd say if you want To Make Your Life Easier Make Sure That What You Receive At Night Is Relevant.

00:10:11: Don't Just Acknowledge And Say Oh Why Did I Get These Alerts At Night?

00:10:16: It Doesn'T Make Sense In Everything.

00:10:20: Always make sure that we tweak the system.

00:10:22: We don't set and forget.

00:10:25: so That's, that's the primary rule because you always need to Make sure that you need to tweak the alerts where you'll make sure You receive the proper ones.

00:10:33: Because at one point if you received many People just they do stop looking at them because I say well It's not their false alarm but least now They know when they get alerted is true.

00:10:46: So there are more into it.

00:10:50: We added SCUM, of course SCUM is connected.

00:10:53: we have Azure connected to the platform where SolarWinds also connect and we also have some devices like standalone devices that we monitor through emails.

00:11:05: so some platforms you just send their notification directly to signal for then get redistributed to the application team.

00:11:14: Okay, and would you say that this is also one of the things that it doesn't matter what platform or as we call them event source.

00:11:23: You have underneath but basically your able to have on communication layer on top like everything in same way with respect if do receive something its important.

00:11:34: which systems come from?

00:11:36: Is there a key thing?

00:11:38: for?

00:11:39: It's looked like an umbrella for me because we tried to do that through SCUM, but SCUM getting older and more rigid it doesn't support all the different modern technology.

00:11:51: You cannot connect Azure easily though SCUM or maybe other system.

00:11:57: you won't get the same result if you do it through SCum then connected directly to signal four.

00:12:05: So making it like signal for the umbrella make its simpler and more efficient than having to play around in a different platform.

00:12:17: Right, when you look at things that feedback from the people that are using it, so you're lucky guys or some of things that might happen in mind.

00:12:29: Where do think future will take?

00:12:32: So what kind use cases can you envision?

00:12:36: The use case we look at and still there is a remote action but didn't look into yet.

00:12:51: we like to automate things, improve at night let's say for less value or during the day.

00:12:59: For that lets me say with front of add a free space to increase it free-space.

00:13:03: so this is something we want to add in the near future some quick action in case of something restarted service but within other time yet too.

00:13:13: play windows features who were busy playing and the other features.

00:13:23: Is there anything that you know from the team or that you yourself, know what stands out in Singapore?

00:13:34: more than other things and some people have said it's like the aspect that mobile app is so intuitive or a mobile app in general.

00:13:43: Some said certain nagging features, I think you mentioned too.

00:13:47: there was main requirement to continue to nag people The personalization with one who can visualize thing something like this?

00:13:57: I will say few Just because they connect multiple sources to it.

00:14:04: so I can monitor anything, I cannot monitor UPS just by sending its notification somewhere and then filter out which one are necessary.

00:14:14: So even if the source solution doesn't have a proper filter system you can always do in signal four either ways that this is one aspect us a lot, especially to split which one are critical versus like the normal ones.

00:14:36: Because if you first started with keywords content that's not content.

00:14:41: it was working but the categories added something more The new on-duty way that you organize your weeks and everything.

00:14:52: That is why I was saying there so many nice features.

00:14:55: we forgot about the remote action And now we have the stakeholders features.

00:15:02: The AIs, I've so many and all of people using it at the operators are using everybody as managers who administrate their duties or they're liking them because sometimes its not always a guy who's gonna be because of vacations.

00:15:24: The system is easy friendly for them to fully understand that they're managing their crew.

00:15:30: It's an easy to learn platform.

00:15:32: That's great.

00:15:33: I think you've said everything there is to say, this like really valuable also for people that understand that there are two different things.

00:15:42: so one how events actually discovered and a completely different game as how you communicate them and mention it too.

00:15:52: How automated the communication process at end?

00:15:55: So i would close out which was question be of interest.

00:16:02: from somebody like you that has been exposed to our solution for a while now, is there certain advice or things that you would like to tell people listening in?

00:16:14: Like this what should keep in mind.

00:16:17: Maybe it's something you thought and forgot... This why Singapore is important!

00:16:23: In general, you said it too- People life are easier and they trust the alerts way more.

00:16:30: but if anything that you would give people as a final advice?

00:16:35: Installing SignalFOR is very easy.

00:16:37: All the documentation, it's very easy for all your integration.

00:16:40: everything is well documented on how to connect things.

00:16:43: after that then second work start but just have.

00:16:48: take time find and think of what you see or operation will be.

00:16:56: takes talk, discuss who's going to be using it especially the operators.

00:17:03: They have to be involved on what you're about to give them.

00:17:08: so they gave your feedback and this is very important because in some place they think that uh its you manage the platform.

00:17:18: So if you are God You decide everything And then there has no decision of whats going on.

00:17:23: I think If they bring their feedback It will get a better.

00:17:28: you will get a better system, and they'll keep it clean because... They don't want to be alerted at night.

00:17:37: That's the key point!

00:17:38: Even if there is a great system that forces them to keep their systems clean even with an alert system?

00:17:44: You do not want to get alerted but at least when they are alerted then your system will respect more the system.

00:17:56: Yeah, I like that.

00:17:57: It's almost you have your vision in head of how things should be which are no alerts please but if I do get alerts then make sure they're relevant and i'm not woken up for nothing.

00:18:10: And design the system with all involved stakeholders in a way that you can rely on it, making sure to have your best use out of them.

00:18:19: For this recommendation is great to say everybody take a moment sit back relax everyone provide their feedback together.

00:18:30: we couldn't end on better note.

00:18:33: This is perfect.

00:18:34: Thank you so much, Henri for spending the time with us and being such a great customer!

00:18:39: It was a pleasure.

00:18:47: If you'd like to learn more about how Signal Four can help your organization achieve the same peace of mind, visit signalfour.com.

00:19:03: Be sure to subscribe so that you won't miss future episodes and share this podcast with your network Until

00:19:08: next time.

00:19:09: Stay alerted.