Sometimes you want to tweak the settings for a monitor in Blue Matador. Perhaps you'd like to raise a threshold or even change the style of event detection that's being used. This article covers how to do just that.

To get started, navigate to the desired monitor through the Atlas (monitors are listed in the pages for each service and resource). Once you’re on the page for the monitor you want to edit, click on the Settings tab.

The first thing you’ll notice in the Settings tab is the notion of “scopes.” A scope is a collection of monitor settings that apply to a resource or a project. When monitoring a resource, Blue Matador will apply the scope that matches that resource most specifically (we’ll explain this a little more in the section about editing scope priority). Scopes contain one or more overrides, each of which corresponds to a specific scenario Blue Matador is watching for.

Every monitor has a default scope that applies to any resources that are not matched by another scope. Initially, it contains overrides that correspond to the default behavior of Blue Matador’s monitoring system.

You can add a scope by clicking the Add Scope button and then choosing the project or resource you’d like to create a scope for. The scope will be automatically populated with overrides that match Blue Matador’s default configuration.

There are a number of actions that can be taken with scopes, and they can all be found in the three dot menu on the right of the scope. The following sections describe the actions in detail.

When a resource matches multiple scopes, Blue Matador uses the scope priority to decide which scope to apply. Resource scopes always have highest precedence and will override any project scopes. If no resource scopes match the resource, the matching project scope with the greatest value for its priority will be applied. To give a project scope higher or lower priority, click on Edit Priority and enter the value you want.

If you click on Disable Events, any resources that match the scope will not generate events for the monitor you’re editing.

Clicking Restore Defaults sets the scope equal to Blue Matador’s default monitoring configuration for the monitor. This means that any resources that match the scope will behave as if the monitor had no custom settings at all.

You can use Delete Scope to remove scopes that you no longer need.

Add Override will create a new override that you can configure to work the way you’d like. It’s covered in more detail in the next section.

Overrides are the heart of monitor settings. Each one defines a condition, a detection type, and a severity. A scope can contain multiple overrides.

A condition tells Blue Matador how to evaluate the data and determine if the monitor is healthy. The types of conditions available for each monitor depends on the type of metric data used in the monitor. Each condition type has its own configuration options, and the setup process walks you through setting each value.

Detection type is used to determine if a detected condition is interesting enough to open an event. There are three detection types:

Each of these options has different configuration values that the setup process will guide you through.

Once you’ve configured the monitor, you need to select its severity. Events created from the override will have the specified severity and will trigger the appropriate notification rules.

Once you’ve created an override, there are a number of actions that can be taken. These actions are found in the three dot menu on the right of the override and are described in the following sections.

Clicking on Edit Condition will take you back to the screen where you select the condition type for the override. From there, you’ll configure the condition, and be able to save the override.

Clicking on Edit Severity will allow you to pick which severity level the override should trigger at without editing the condition.

Disable will make it so Blue Matador no longer checks for the condition. Events will no longer be triggered by this override.

Use Delete to remove unwanted overrides.