Alerts in Oracle Application

Oracle Alert facilitates the flow of information within your organization by letting you create entities called alerts to monitor your business information and to notify you of the information you want.

Two types of alerts:

     1.    Event alert

     2.    Periodic alert.

Event Alert:

These Alerts are fired/triggered based on some change in data in the database.

Ex: If you want to notify your manager when you create an item in the inventory you can use Event based alerts. When you create an item in the inventory it will create a new record in mtl_system_items_b, here inserting a record in the table is an event so whenever a new record is inserted it will send the alert. In same alert you can also send the information related to that particular item.

Periodic Alert:

Ex: If you want to know list of items created on that day at the end of day you can use periodic alerts repeating periodically by single day. This alert is not based on any changes to database. This alert will notify you everyday regardless of data exists or not that means even if no items are created you will get a blank notification.

Navigation in Oracle Apps to define an alert:

Go to “Alert Manager” Responsibility

Alert >> Define

How to define a periodic alert:

1. Go to Alert Manager > Alert > Define.
2. Select the ‘Periodic’ Tab.
3. Enter the name of the application that owns the alert in the Application field.
4. Name the alert (up to 50 characters), and give it a meaningful description (up to 240 characters).
5. Check Enabled to enable your periodic alert.
6. Set the frequency for the periodic alert to any of the following:

• On Demand
• On Day of the Month
• On Day of the Week
• Every N Calendar Days
• Every Day
• Every Other Day
• Every N Business Days
• Every Business Day
• Every Other Business Day

Enter a SQL Select statement that retrieves all the data your alert needs to perform the actions you plan to define. Your periodic alert Select statement must include an INTO clause that contains one output for each column selected by your Select statement.

Here is an example of a periodic alert Select statement that looks for users who have not changed their passwords within the number of days specified by the value in: THRESHOLD_DAYS

SELECT user_name,

password_date,

:THRESHOLD_DAYS

INTO &USER,

&LASTDATE,

&NUMDAYS

FROM fnd_user

WHERE sysdate = NVL(password_date,

sysdate) + :THRESHOLD_DAYS

ORDER BY user_name

Although Oracle Alert does not support PL/SQL statements as the alert SQL statement definition, you can create a PL/SQL packaged function that contains PL/SQL logic and enter a SQL Select statement that calls that packaged function.

You can verify the accuracy and effectiveness of your Select statement. Choose Verify to parse your Select statement and display the result in a Note window.

Choose Run to execute the Select statement in one of your application’s Oracle IDs, and display the number of rows returned in a Note window.

Once you are satisfied with the SQL statement, save your work.

Specifying Alert Details:

Once you define an event or periodic alert in the Alerts window, you need to display to the Alert Details window to complete the alert definition. The Alert Details window includes information such as which Application installations you want the alert to run against, what default values you want your inputs variables to use, and what additional characteristics you want your output variables to have.

Creating Alert Actions:

After you define your alert you need to create the actions you want your alert to perform. There are four types of actions you can create:

• Message actions

• Concurrent program actions

• operating script actions

• SQL statement script actions

Choose Actions

Enter a name (up to 80 characters) and description (up to 240 characters) for your alert action.

Select a level for your action: Detail, Summary, or No Exception.

Choose Action Details to display the Action Details window.

Select the type of action you want to create in the Action Type field

Creating an Event Alert:

Specify the name of the application and the database table that you want Oracle Alert to monitor.

Note: You cannot use a view as the event table for your alert.

Check After Insert and/or After Update if you want to run your event alert when an application user inserts and/or updates a row in the database table.

Specify a value in the Keep _ Days field to indicate the number of days of exceptions, actions, and response actions history you want to keep for this alert.

Specify a value in the End Date field if you want to disable your alert by a certain date.

Important Alert Tables:

• ALR_ALERTS
• ALR_ACTIONS
• ALR_ACTION_SETS
• ALR_ACTION_SET_INPUTS
• ALR_ACTION_SET_OUTPUTS
• ALR_ACTION_SET_MEMBERS
• ALR_ALERT_CHECKS
• ALR_ALERT_INPUTS
• ALR_ALERT_OUTPUTS
• ALR_ACTION_SET_CHECKS
• ALR_RESPONSE_SETS
• ALR_RESPONSE_ACTIONS
• ALR_VALID_RESONSES

Oracle Alert uses the following internal views:

•  ALR_ALERT_ACTIONS_VIEW
•  ALR_ALERT_HISTORY_VIEW
•  ALR_CHECK_ACTION_HISTORY_VIEW
•  ALR_INSTALLATIONS_VIEW
•  ALR_PERIODIC_ALERTS_VIEW
•  ALR_RESPONSE_ACTIONS_VIEW
•  ALR_SCHEDULED_PROGRAMS
•  ALR_VARIABLES_AND_OUTPUTS

For complete details you can refer Oracle Alert User’s Guide

Transfer Alert from one instance/database to other:

Go to “Alert Manager” Responsibility

Alert >> Define

Go to “Tools” Menu on top

Click on “Transfer Alert”

Enter source and destination fields and click Transfer.