Delivery formats in notification rules

Message and Content panes in PI System Explorer

You can configure the format of the message that is delivered when a notification rule is triggered in the Message and Content panes in PI System Explorer.

To see the Message and Content panes, navigate to the Notification Rules tab for a selected element, and then click Manage Formats in the Subscriptions pane.

Global default formats

The system provides one global format that is used as the default format when a subscriber is added to a notification rule. You can edit or rename the global format, but you cannot delete it.

You can also create additional global formats. These global formats can be viewed in notification rules or notification rule templates. To create, edit or delete global formats, navigate to Tools > Global Formats in PI System Explorer. You can edit the fields in the Manage Global Formats window. To create and edit global formats, follow the procedures in the "Custom delivery formats" heading below. For more information on additional global configuration parameters for notifications, see the knowledge base article Manually Managing Global Configuration Parameters in Notifications 2.x.

Custom delivery formats

To create a custom delivery email format, copy the default Global Default Email format by clicking on the copy icon in the Message pane. Alternatively, you can create a new delivery format by clicking the new delivery format icon . The default format includes basic notification information such as the notification rule name, trigger time and event frame start time, as well as system information such as system and database names.

To customize your delivery format, you can drag and drop the following types of information from the Content pane to the Message pane:

• PI AF Server properties

• Database properties

• Notification Rule properties

• Event frame properties

• Event frame attributes. If an event frame template is selected, you may add the event frame template attributes to the content of your email notification.

• Referenced element properties

• Referenced element attributes

These properties and attributes can provide a lot of input to analyzing the event of interest; for example, including the event frame start time property can tell you when the event of interest started. Including specific event frame and referenced element attributes can give you supporting information about key parameters.

Starting from PI AF 2018, any numerical attributes in email notifications will display number of digits according to how Display Digit is configured on the attribute or attribute template. For more information, see Control the display of attribute and attribute template values.

For AVEVA PI Vision users, notifications in PI AF 2017 R2 gives the option to construct a link that specifies a full path to a display. You can select Full Path from Referenced element properties or Referenced element attributes under the Content pane.

• PI Notifications Service and PI System Explorer 2017 R2 or later are required to use the Full Path option.

• Full Path can also be configured for global delivery formats.

• The existing Path option is relative to the reference element or attributes.

When sending a notification email, you can include a web, AVEVA PI Vision URI, or a file link. That way, you can easily navigate to specific locations for relevant information about attributes, event frames, and so on. To add a link, click in the Message pane, and then click the link icon. You will be prompted to enter your base address. When you click the Continue button, Create a link window will open. There, you can configure your link.

Notifications in PI AF 2017 R2 has a new link-related feature. You now have an option to include a Screenshot (or a static image) of the data that triggered the notification. This way, separate data retrieval from the source is not necessary, which would have been the case if only a URI (link) was included in the email. You can also specify display options if you choose to display the link as a screenshot. See Add a screenshot in notification email delivery format.

• Screenshots should come from a trusted source. For more information, see Add a domain to the list of trusted sites.

• To add a Screenshot from AVEVA PI Vision, make sure that NTLM provider is enabled for Windows Authentication in AVEVA PI Vision. For more information on system requirements, see Software requirements for notifications.

You can edit the message if you choose to display your link as a text. Display link as option can be found in 2 other places: in Event Details Hyperlink (if AVEVA PI Vision is configured) and URI hyperlink (under Referenced element attributes; see Create URI Builder data references for more information).

If you are configuring a Web URI, you can specify a fragment, which is a string that is appended at the end of the URI. For more information on query string parameters, see the PI Vision user guide topic URL parameters reference.

You can add a file attachment to your delivery format by clicking on the + symbol in the Attachments field. The selected attachment will be uploaded as an attribute on the referenced element. For acceptable types of attachment files, see /FileExtensions in AFDiag utility parameters.

Tip: If the Content pane has a message indicating that your selected format is "read-only", you must first add a new format before you can customize it.

Training video

For more information on message formats, watch the AVEVA PI System Learning channel video: