Custom Alert - Match on Tag Key, independent of Tag Value

[ct_27]

All of our Host entities are given a Tag for [ITSM]Tier:#.

Key = [ITSM]Tier

Value = a number between 1 and 5. 

This is required information so I want to trigger Alerts only if this KEY exists, independent of what the value is. After some testing I've determined the below, valid, configuration causes the Custom Alert to never trigger. 

 

The only way i can get this to work is to create 5 Alerting Profiles. One for each potential Value.  This Alerting Profile specifically has many rules to it so having to maintain 5 of these would be impractical.  Plus i have another tag with similar issue so to handle all situations I would have to create 5*5 = 25 Alerting Profiles to handle all situations.

[ChadTurner]

Just to be clear, this issue affect all types of problem alert custom events for alerting and out of the box alerting. We ran into a similar issue where things had to be isolated by environment because staff wanted a subject line that would contain the environment. Overall the Alerting Profiles and integrations do need to become more robust. I recommend tossing in a RFE for this. 

[awahab]

The solution I am suggesting may not be elegant but it works.

Create a automatic tagging rule with a tag name lets say 'ITSMTierExists' if one of the 5 tag exists. Now you can use ITSMTierExists tag in your Alerting profile.

[ct_27]

Thank you @awahab for the suggested solution, I appreciate you taking the time to share.

I would not consider the suggested solution the answer though.  The amount of overhead, clutter of unnecessary tags, and maintenance to implement the solution would actually make the system less stable.   In many cases the Key could have 100's or virtually unlimited number of potential values, thus making the "Exists" tag impossible to maintain. 

My question to DT, if anyone is watching, why is "Tag Value (optional)"?  In my case, I opted not to fill in the "optional" field because I want to match on the Key.    If you intended something else by "optional" it should be more clear or adjust the backend logic to actually handle the use case where I enter Key but not Tag.