Custom Alerts

Custom Alerts

Overview

WISdom's built-in alerts cover the most common SQL Server monitoring scenarios right out of the box. But every environment is different! And sometimes, the conditions that matter most to your organization are unique to your applications, business processes, or infrastructure setup.

Custom Alerts bridge that gap. They let you write your own T-SQL queries to define exactly what WISdom monitors, set thresholds and tolerances that fit your environment, and receive alerts that work exactly like standard WISdom alerts:

• Alerts appear in dashboards
  • DBA Dashboard
  • Health - Alerts
• Alerts are assigned to profiles and integrated into your existing notification workflows
• Alert Rules may be created and assigned to a custom alert

If you can query it in SQL Server, you can alert on it in WISdom.

Permissions required: Administrator or Power User — Admin Console → Monitoring

How Custom Alerts Work

Custom Alerts are built in two steps that work together:

Step 1 — Custom Monitoring Query
Write a T-SQL query that returns the data you want to monitor. The query runs against your selected SQL Server instances every minute, collecting fresh results for evaluation. Once the query is validated, it becomes available as a data source for one or more Custom Alerts.

Step 2 — Custom Alert Type
Create a Custom Alert that references your validated query. Map the query's result columns to tell WISdom which column is the value to evaluate and which column identifies the specific object being monitored, such as a database, table, or drive. Set a threshold, choose a comparison operator, and define how long the condition must persist before the alert fires.

Once saved, WISdom evaluates your Custom Alert automatically every minute alongside all standard alerts, opening and closing the alert as conditions change.

The Workflow at a Glance

1. Write a query — Create a Custom Monitoring Query using read-only T-SQL that returns the data you want to watch. Select the target instances where the query will run.
2. Validate the query — WISdom executes the query against a selected instance to confirm it runs successfully, returns a usable result set, and is safe for ongoing automated execution. Only validated queries can be used by Custom Alerts.
3. Create a Custom Alert — Build a Custom Alert that references your validated query. Select which result columns map to the value to monitor and the object it belongs to.
4. Set the condition — Choose a comparison operator and threshold that define when the alert should fire. Configure a tolerance duration so brief spikes do not generate unnecessary noise.
   • Create multiple tolerance settings to create multiple alert levels
5. Assign and monitor — Add the Custom Alert to your Alert Profiles and Rules. WISdom evaluates and manages the alert automatically from this point forward.

When to Use Custom Alerts

Custom Alerts are the right tool when a condition you need to monitor is not covered by WISdom's standard alert types. Common use cases include:

• Replication health — Track and alert on Replication issues, like expired subscriptions or a Subscriber failing validation.
• Capacity monitoring — Watch for databases approaching size limits, log file growth, or TempDB usage patterns specific to your environment.
• Application-specific checks — Monitor conditions tied to your custom application tables, job patterns, or configuration states.
• Compliance and policy — Flag conditions such as disabled auditing, unexpected permission changes, or identity column exhaustion thresholds.
• Environment-specific configurations — Alert on anything unique to your infrastructure that standard monitoring does not cover.

If a standard WISdom alert already covers your use case, there is no need to create a custom version. Custom Alerts are designed to fill the gaps.

In This Section

• Custom Monitoring Queries — How to write, validate, and manage the T-SQL queries that power your Custom Alerts.
• Creating a Custom Alert — How to build a Custom Alert from your query, configure thresholds and tolerances, and manage alerts across your environment.