Getting Your Alert To Fire

Most likely you are reading this article because your alert refuses to send you any notifications. So we will focus on the possible causes. Check these:

• Does your alert have at least one alerting rule?
• If there is more than 1 alerting rule, can they actually all be true at the same time?
• Is the alert's status set to "Enabled"?
• Is there a holiday attached that's preventing alerts?
• Are the settings on the "Frequency" tab set correctly?
• Have you set the frequency to stop after a certain number of alerts have fired, and that number has been reached?
• Are you sure that the alerting rules have been true at some point after starting alerting?
• Scheduled processes on the Command Centre:
  • Have you started the price download and/or creation process? Is it working and new price bars are coming in? You can check this by using the Chart window or Price History Search window. If no then read this.
  • Have you started the alerting process?
  • Are the alerting tasks being processed without error? You can check this on the "Alerting Tasks" > "Completed List" tab. Scroll to the right-side of the result grid. Anything in the "Error Text" field is bad.
• Did you accidentally set the alert's "last bar used" dates or "last checked" date into the future? This will pause alerting until those dates are reached.
• Have you created at least one Broadcast Setting which matches the alert?
  • Is it enabled?
  • Is the address being sent to enabled?
  • Is the address correct?
  • On the Options window, have you enabled messages in general?
  • Each time a message is broadcast, ATM Activity is logged. Search through that ATM Activity and check the results of the broadcast attempts. Error messages there will give more clues.
     

Graphical representation of the checklist

Here's what it kind of looks like graphically:

If it still doesn't work

If your alert still refuses to fire, you will need to seek advice in the forum. Give as much information as you can. An exported version of your alert would be ideal. If you are worried about your privacy, then make a copy of your alert. Edit the copy, delete the private stuff, and maybe make a generic version of your alert that still displays the same problem but doesn't give away your special sauce. Export that one instead.

Screenshots are also good. We've found that glancing through these screenshots, it takes about 20 seconds to diagnose the problem. Without the screenshots or the exported alert it takes a lot longer.