Creating notification rules

Notification rules connect events with channels so that the event's logging information can be passed along to the specified channel.

Trust Protection Platform provides several default notification rules you can edit or use to create new notification rule objects.

Notification rules can be seen as a type of filtering tool. They contain filtering criteria that either match or don't match system events. For each system event, the log server checks each notification rule to see if its rules match the event. If it matches, the log is passed to the channel (or channels) configured for the notification rule. If the event doesn't match the notification rule, the system takes no additional action.

You use notification rules to tell the system which events are important to you, and what logging action to take when one of those events occurs. These logging actions are defined in channels.

Notification rules answer the question "What events are important?" Channels answer the question "What should happen when an important event happens?"

For example, if you want to email important events to your mailbox, you must select an SMTP channel that is configured to relay events to your email address. Similarly, if you want to log specific events to a MS SQL database, you must select a MS SQL channel that is configured to write the events to the correct database and table. You can define multiple channels for any given notification rule.

To create a notification rule:

  1. In Venafi Configuration Console (VCC) or the Tools MMC Snap-in, open Tools > Logging > Notification Rules .

    NOTE  You must have Create, Write permission to the Notification Rules folder.

  2. In the Actions panel, click Create new notification.

    To use an existing rule as a template, you can also choose a pre-configured rule from the Built-In list, then click the Duplicate action.

  3. In the Add Notification dialog, specify a name for the notification rule , and then click Add.
  4. Complete the notification rule configuration, and then click Apply.

The following table outlines the configuration settings for notification rules.

Notification rule configuration settings
Field Description
Description A short explanation of the purpose of the rule. This will be displayed at the bottom of the Actions Panel in the Description section.

Target Channels

Channel objects the Venafi Log server uses to provide event responses or log the events.

Click the Search box to load a list of channels.

You can select multiple channels for any given notification rule.

Notification Disabled

Disables the current Notification Rule object.

Edit the Rule

Opens the Rule Editor.

The Rule Editor is described in Working with the Rule Editor.