Introduction to Smart Routing – Highnet Systems

What is a Smart Routing?

SNS++ Smart Routing Engine (SRE) is a sophisticated addition to SNS++ Routing Engine.

SNS++ Smart Routing does not require the sender of the Alert to specify the recipient/recipients that will receive the message.

Using SNS++ Smart Routing offers the following advantages:

Simplify management - There is no need to define who gets every alert and notification.
Improves routing - SNS++ Smart routing gives each recipient the ability to get exactly the information he/she needs and eliminate unwanted messages. This improves the overall quality of the notification solution.
Reduce maintenance - Smart Routing completely separate notification management from the management and monitoring systems as you don't need to include notification related information while integrating the notification system with the management and monitoring solutions.

To use SNS++ Smart Routing when sending a notification:

Using SNS++ Smart Routing is simple. All you need to do is to send the notification with a special recipient code: smartrouting,

SNS++ Routing engine will direct the notification to the Smart Routing Engine (SRE) to handle its routing according to SNS++ Smart Routing definitions found in SNS++ database.

Note: You can combine Smart Routing together with SNS++ recipients & group routing, simply by adding 'smartrouting' to the notification’s recipient’s list. SNS++ will make sure that recipient’s will not receive duplicate copies of the notification.

How does Smart Routing work?

SNS++ Smart Routing scans the incoming notification and according to objects found in the notification text, route the specific notification to recipients registered to get notifications that include those objects or object combinations.
SNS++ Smart Routing also support defining specific objects for specific notification senders, i.e. if you want to distinguish nodename from Nagios sender for those from HP OpenView.

To use SNS++ Smart Routing you first need to define the objects that can be found in the notification text, there are two types of objects:

Simple Object - Simple object is an object that is constructed from one object, i.e. nodename, IP address, severity or description.
Combo Object - Combo object is a combination of two to five object type, for example: service on specific node. The combo object is defined by the combination of the definition of the service object and the node object and only the combination that matches both, match the definition of the Combo object.

SNS++ Smart Routing can be defined in two ways: Per recipient or by using a template.

Smart Routing Recipient Profile - The recipients will receive those notifications that include specific objects as part of the notification text.
Smart Routing Templates - A set of Objects and Combo Objects that are grouped under a specific template and recipients can assign themselves to this template if they want to receive the notifications that include those objects as part of the notification text.

The use of template simply the on-going management of Smart Routing rules. This is our best practice for managing SR rules.

The processing of Smart Routing rules is divided into 3 check levels or phases. When creating a SR rule, you specify the level where this rule will be processed/evaluated.

If a message is tagged with the smartrouting special recipient (See SNS++ Client command syntax), it enters the SR rules engine pipeline. All the rules in the first level will be checked. If there is a match by one or more rules in the first phase, then SR engine marks to send the message to the assigned recipient/s (Meaning, to the delivery engine). No further processing will be done in the next phases.

If there is no match on the first check level, then SR engine moves to the second level and so on.

Hence, our best practice is to put the most strict & specific rules in the 1st phase and the most generic one's in the 3rd phase.

First step in Smart Routing is by creating Object Types. See Managing Object Types.