Nagios XI oddities between XI users and contacts

[chaddenver]

I am using Nagios XI 5.2.3. Below are a few things I consider non-intuitive behavior when configuring users using XI and contacts. I have read through both these documents that describe users and contacts:

https://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nag ... ntacts.pdf

⁃ https://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nag ... ios-XI.pdf

and the inheritance of objects here:
https://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nag ... tance.html


however I was not able to really understand how alerts to a Nagios XI user behaved with a linked Configuration "contact" until I played around with it. Some observations I find confusing:

#1) If I click on my XI logged in user, and then select Notification Preferences, and select additional options on my Email or Mobile preferences, then click 'Cancel' (never clicking the 'Update Settings'). It seems the settings are actually taken. Because if I then browse into CCM->Contact-><select xi user>, and look at the Alert settings, if I had previously had a setting of 'Skip' for host notifications, this is now set to 'On'. This seems like a bug to me as I never selected 'Update Settings' on the XI user page and so wouldn't expect the Contact configuration to actually change.

#2) I went the route of attempting to set up two XI users, one for Email and one for SMS alerts, based on my needs and this thread: https://support.nagios.com/forum/viewto ... 82&p=62005

But one thing I noticed is that if a user then browses to their 'Notification Preference' options changes any setting (say their notification hours) and clicks Apply, then this also overwrites the Service Notification and Host Notification from being 'Skip' to 'On', thereby configuring this user to get all Host and Service notifications, not just the services/hosts I have selected via their contact-group membership. Maybe this is related to #1, but I think even if this didn't happen, I think it would be confusing to an XI user login to not know whether their notification preferences applied to all hosts and service checks, or just the ones they were associated to via contact group membership and a contact setting of 'Skip'.

#3) This is minor, but the contact associated with a Nagios XI user shows the contacts timepreiods as "Disabled". I assume this is because the settings are taken from the XI user time periods, but I didn't see anything in the documentation to describe the interaction on time periods between a contact and an XI user and what happens if I enable different time periods in the CCM contact form.

[Box293]

#1) If I click on my XI logged in user, and then select Notification Preferences, and select additional options on my Email or Mobile preferences, then click 'Cancel' (never clicking the 'Update Settings'). It seems the settings are actually taken. Because if I then browse into CCM->Contact-><select xi user>, and look at the Alert settings, if I had previously had a setting of 'Skip' for host notifications, this is now set to 'On'. This seems like a bug to me as I never selected 'Update Settings' on the XI user page and so wouldn't expect the Contact configuration to actually change.

Yes you've found a bug. I've added it as a bug report to our bug tracking system, TASK ID 8015.

#2) I went the route of attempting to set up two XI users, one for Email and one for SMS alerts, based on my needs and this thread: viewtopic.php?t=11782&p=62005

But one thing I noticed is that if a user then browses to their 'Notification Preference' options changes any setting (say their notification hours) and clicks Apply, then this also overwrites the Service Notification and Host Notification from being 'Skip' to 'On', thereby configuring this user to get all Host and Service notifications, not just the services/hosts I have selected via their contact-group membership. Maybe this is related to #1, but I think even if this didn't happen, I think it would be confusing to an XI user login to not know whether their notification preferences applied to all hosts and service checks, or just the ones they were associated to via contact group membership and a contact setting of 'Skip'.

Notifications need to be enabled on the contact object before specific host or service checks are allowed to send notifications to the contact.

You will notice that if you uncheck some of the Notification Preferences for the types of alerts you'd like to receive, they are not reflected in the contact object. This is where XI gets a bit complicated.

XI has advanced notification Nagios XI extends the notification capabilities of Nagios Core, and because of this any notification preferences should be defined while logged on as that user by clicking on their name in the top right corner. You can use the masquerade icon (eyeball) to log in as that user.

Trying to manipulate the contact objects is not advised as it will give mixed results.

#3) This is minor, but the contact associated with a Nagios XI user shows the contacts timepreiods as "Disabled". I assume this is because the settings are taken from the XI user time periods, but I didn't see anything in the documentation to describe the interaction on time periods between a contact and an XI user and what happens if I enable different time periods in the CCM contact form.

I was not able to re-produce this. The test users I created on three separate XI systems have the timeperiods created and active.

[chaddenver]

OK thanks for the quick response. I think I am to going to go the route of using core contact objects only, and not multiple XI users. The XI user interface seems like a nice way to manage emails, SMS addresses, and preferences, but its more important for me to have the membership to contact groups for varying service priorities take precedence.

I also tried to reproduce #3 to see how I ended up with the contact's notification periods disabled, and was unable to reproduce it.

[hsmith]

Is there anything else we can help you out with regarding this?

[chaddenver]

No, thanks for the quick response.

[hsmith]

I'll go ahead and close the topic. Please let us know if you run into anything else.

Thanks!