IoT administration

How your nominated administrators configure the office monitoring service: where sensors are, how they connect, what they test and who is told when something goes wrong.

Before you start

The administration views are restricted to the senior staff you nominate. Everything is set in the portal, not on the devices.

The order to work in

1. Sites: the offices being monitored.
2. Sensors and network profiles: which sensor is where, and how it connects.
3. Wireless maps: where each sensor sits on each floor.
4. Applications: what the sensors test.
5. Alerts: who is told, and when.

How changes work

1. Select the item to change, such as a site, sensor or application, and edit it in its form. Changed values are highlighted, and the submit button becomes active.
2. Submit, then confirm the change when asked.
3. Every sensor picks up the change within a poll cycle. Alert rules regenerate automatically.

Every change is recorded in an audit trail: who changed what and when, with the old and new values. The trail is kept for a year.

Standard allowances

Each can be raised on request: contact support.

Sites

A site is one office. The portal comes with a fixed set of site slots; select one and fill it in.

Sensors

Each sensor is identified by the Device ID printed on the label at its back. Select the Device ID, then set:

Then assign the sensor a network profile, which tells it how to connect.

Network profiles

A network profile tells sensors how to join your networks. Each profile holds up to 3 Wi-Fi networks and 1 Ethernet network, and a sensor assigned to the profile can use any of them. Assign a profile to one or more sensors.

• Failover: include both your normal network and your disaster-recovery SSID, and give the disaster-recovery SSID the higher priority so sensors prefer it whenever it is broadcast.
• Several offices, one profile: if three offices each have their own SSID, put all three in one profile. Sensors using it can then work in any of the three offices.

ModelA sensors are wireless only, so only the Wi-Fi networks in a profile apply to them.

Wi-Fi network settings

Ethernet network settings

IP allocation by DHCP, or static with IP address, subnet mask, default gateway and two DNS servers.

Wireless maps

A wireless map is the floor plan behind a floor's Wi-Fi view. You need the floor plan as an image and a record of where each sensor was installed.

1. Generate a draft. Choose the site and floor and upload your floor plan image. After about a minute the portal produces a draft map with numbered sensor icons on your plan. Download it.
2. Position the sensors. Open the draft in the diagram editor provided in the portal. Move an icon to each real sensor's position, name it to match the sensor, and delete the icons you don't need. Save the file to your computer.
3. Publish. Choose the same site and floor, upload the saved file and submit. The floor's Wi-Fi view is created and appears in the site's list of wireless views.

Update or delete an existing map from the same place.

Applications

The applications every sensor tests, every two minutes. For each one, set:

• Name: how it appears in the views.
• URL: the address the sensors test.
• Status: enable or disable testing. A disabled application also disappears from the views.

Results appear in the application views and on each site's view. If you replace one application with another, the old one's history is kept: for a time range that spans the change, you'll see both.

Alerts

You set the thresholds and recipients in simple forms; the alert rules build themselves. A sustained problem typically raises an alert in about 10–15 minutes, an estimate based on the default settings: rules are checked every two minutes and must stay in breach for ten.

Email groups

Alerts go to email notification groups. For each group set:

• the recipients' email addresses
• whether to send one combined email to everyone or one per recipient
• whether the group is also told when an alert is resolved
• whether the group is enabled. Only enabled groups can be chosen for an alert.

Alerts to Teams, Slack, ITSM or on-call tools can be set up on request.

Alert types

Every alert can be enabled or disabled, and sends to the email group you choose.

What the alerts measure and how they are evaluated: Data and alerting.