Craig S Miller

Alerts

Rethinking Vyopta's alerting system to become more actionable for customers, to not only know when an issue was taking place in their system, but for them to take immediate action to resolve the issue. We also introduced custom threshold settings which fulfilled our #1 custom feature request.

My Role

I was the lead product designer working on a team size of 6 people that included program managers, software engineers, customer success, QA testers and sales engineers. I was responsible for UX Design, UI Design, Interaction Design and UX Research (assisting lead Product Manager).

Create an alert page

Highlights

Current customers asking for actionable alerts renewed their expiring contracts impacting over $1M of sales in 2022.
New customers acquired when other notification platforms (Slack, MS Teams and Webex) were integrated into the system.
Users could now visualize real time updates for alerts when setting them up.
#1 feature request of top customers – set their own custom quality thresholds was fulfilled.

Project Scope

Deliver a completely reimagined alerting experience within 6 months and build an entirely new back end alerting engine with many unknowns. We also needed to integrate an intuitive solution for custom thresholds and test notifications on multiple systems, QA environments and time zones.

The Challenge

The current workflow for alert creation was clunky and difficult to setup and monitor. In addition, customers needed a more intuitive approach to modify and monitor not only their own alerts, but other team members at the same time.

Users found that when they received their email notification, they could not understand what the issue was and what actions needed to be taken.
There was confusion within the company as to how alerts currently worked, how they should be built going forward.

Mapping out the current alerts workflow process

Research & Interviews

I mapped out the legacy alerting workflow by developing wireframes to help determine our starting point.
Researching the current alerting process by interviewing multiple internal stakeholders (software engineers, product support, sales engineers) to better comprehend their understanding of how alerts currently worked.
Led white boarding sessions within our product team to help determine our MVP.
After internal agreement on previous and current directions, I helped interview key customers on their experiences.

Early workflow concept for alerts

Design Sprint

I help facilitate multiple mini design sprints with key stakeholders to see how we might simplify things to allow customers to create an alert and easily understand what actions they could take when notified.

Customers wanted to visually see the threshold chart being built and how their choices affected it.
Only certain customers needed custom quality thresholds while others found it overwhelming and confusing.
The actual alert notification needed to be actionable and delivered to more than just email.

The high level goals became:

Provide a simple UX to create, edit and monitor complex alerts.
Show real time updates for threshold chart.
Expand the notification capabilities beyond just email.
Make the notification actionable, tell me what to do!

The Execution

I identified the key areas of the UX design based off of our research findings and broke the project up into the most intuitive sections. I start with sketching things out on paper, then creating basic wireframes, followed up with the core mock ups and finally developing a working prototype. We identified these key areas:

Select, build and manage

Challenge: Users were presented a crowded modal window upon creating an alert with limited options.
Solution: We opened up the alert creation with its own page to see it being built, introduced the ability to smartly group simple and advanced things, created an interactive trend chart and enhanced the management for adding devices.

Step by step workflow

Trend chart updates with each selection

Easy to select options

Device management

Set filter conditions

Challenge: Setting filter conditions previously only applied to one metric (endpoints) that was accessed from the modal.
Solution: We added significantly more options for the user by including our filter and search component and introduced the ability to set standard and custom quality thresholds.

Filter conditions

Define status triggers

Challenge: Setting status trigger were very limited and only allowed one per alert.
Solution: We created a management system that was easy to understand, add, delete and change trigger statuses.

Define status triggers

Notify your team

Challenge: Setting a notification was very limited and only allowed one per alert.
Solution: We introduced the ability to notify on multiple threshold levels from the same alert, and the ability to create different types of notifications (email, Slack, MS Teams and Webex) for other platforms.

Notify

View all alerts

Challenge: The previous version only allowed basic search and the ability to open and edit alerts.
Solution: Users wanted the ability to see the status of each alert and to quickly disable when needed. We also introduced a new visual filtering system.

Alert rules page

Actionable alerts for email and more

Challenge: Previously emails only told you there was an issue, they did not provide a solution. This was a source of major frustration for users.
Solution: We made each alert actionable, giving users a detailed overview on what happened, and provided notifications for email and other platforms (Slack, Microsoft Teams and Webex).

Actionable alert

Create from dashboard

New feature: Customers wanted the ability to create an alert from their existing dashboard panels. This greatly helped reduce the time it took to setup a new alert.

Create alert from dashboard panel

Outcome & Results

We achieved our goal of completely rebuilding and delivering a new alerting system within one year.

Making alerts actionable was the primary reason for signing renewal customers that impacted over $1M of sales in 2022.
Expanding notifications to other platforms like Slack, MS Teams and Webex helped land new customers who previously considered this a deal breaker.
The overall experience became much easier and clearer to understand for both current power users who craved more options and new customers wanting an easy setup process.

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My Role

Create an alert page

Highlights

Project Scope

Deliver a completely reimagined alerting experience within 6 months and build an entirely new back end alerting engine with many unknowns. We also needed to integrate an intuitive solution for custom thresholds and test notifications on multiple systems, QA environments and time zones.

The Challenge

The current workflow for alert creation was clunky and difficult to setup and monitor. In addition, customers needed a more intuitive approach to modify and monitor not only their own alerts, but other team members at the same time.

Users found that when they received their email notification, they could not understand what the issue was and what actions needed to be taken.

There was confusion within the company as to how alerts currently worked, how they should be built going forward.

Mapping out the current alerts workflow process

Research & Interviews

I mapped out the legacy alerting workflow by developing wireframes to help determine our starting point.

Researching the current alerting process by interviewing multiple internal stakeholders (software engineers, product support, sales engineers) to better comprehend their understanding of how alerts currently worked.

Led white boarding sessions within our product team to help determine our MVP.

After internal agreement on previous and current directions, I helped interview key customers on their experiences.

Early workflow concept for alerts

Design Sprint

I help facilitate multiple mini design sprints with key stakeholders to see how we might simplify things to allow customers to create an alert and easily understand what actions they could take when notified.

Customers wanted to visually see the threshold chart being built and how their choices affected it.

Only certain customers needed custom quality thresholds while others found it overwhelming and confusing.

The actual alert notification needed to be actionable and delivered to more than just email.

The high level goals became:

Provide a simple UX to create, edit and monitor complex alerts.

Show real time updates for threshold chart.

Expand the notification capabilities beyond just email.

Make the notification actionable, tell me what to do!

The Execution

Select, build and manage

Challenge: Users were presented a crowded modal window upon creating an alert with limited options.

Solution: We opened up the alert creation with its own page to see it being built, introduced the ability to smartly group simple and advanced things, created an interactive trend chart and enhanced the management for adding devices.

Step by step workflow

Trend chart updates with each selection

Easy to select options

Device management

Set filter conditions

Challenge: Setting filter conditions previously only applied to one metric (endpoints) that was accessed from the modal.

Solution: We added significantly more options for the user by including our filter and search component and introduced the ability to set standard and custom quality thresholds.

Filter conditions

Define status triggers

Challenge: Setting status trigger were very limited and only allowed one per alert.

Solution: We created a management system that was easy to understand, add, delete and change trigger statuses.

Define status triggers

Notify your team

Challenge: Setting a notification was very limited and only allowed one per alert.

Solution: We introduced the ability to notify on multiple threshold levels from the same alert, and the ability to create different types of notifications (email, Slack, MS Teams and Webex) for other platforms.

Notify

View all alerts

Challenge: The previous version only allowed basic search and the ability to open and edit alerts.

Solution: Users wanted the ability to see the status of each alert and to quickly disable when needed. We also introduced a new visual filtering system.

Alert rules page

Actionable alerts for email and more

Challenge: Previously emails only told you there was an issue, they did not provide a solution. This was a source of major frustration for users.

Solution: We made each alert actionable, giving users a detailed overview on what happened, and provided notifications for email and other platforms (Slack, Microsoft Teams and Webex).

Actionable alert

Create from dashboard

New feature: Customers wanted the ability to create an alert from their existing dashboard panels. This greatly helped reduce the time it took to setup a new alert.

Create alert from dashboard panel

Outcome & Results

We achieved our goal of completely rebuilding and delivering a new alerting system within one year.

Making alerts actionable was the primary reason for signing renewal customers that impacted over $1M of sales in 2022.

Expanding notifications to other platforms like Slack, MS Teams and Webex helped land new customers who previously considered this a deal breaker.

The overall experience became much easier and clearer to understand for both current power users who craved more options and new customers wanting an easy setup process.