Screen Monitoring & Downtime Alerts

Screen Monitoring & Downtime Alerts

Keeping your screens reliably online is essential for effective workplace communication — a blank or offline display is more than a technical glitch, it’s a missed opportunity to reach your audience. Active Screen Monitoring lets you set up Downtime Alerts so you’ll be notified when one or more screens go offline or don’t check in on schedule. This proactive monitoring helps you respond quickly and resolve issues before they impact engagement.

What Active Screen Monitoring Does

Active Screen Monitoring continuously checks the status of your digital signage devices at configured intervals. When a screen fails to report its status within the expected window (e.g., goes offline or loses connection), the system triggers a Downtime Alert and notifies your chosen recipients (usually via email). This gives you visibility into screen health without having to manually watch dashboards or physically inspect displays.

Where to Find the Settings

You can manage screen monitoring and downtime alerts from Vibes Admin Console:

  1. Log into the Vibe admin console.
  2. Go to Settings > Alerts.
  3. Select the Alerts tab where you can configure monitoring schedules, recipients, and alert behaviour. 

Set Up Downtime Alerts

  1. Open the Alerts Manager
    1. From your admin console, click the Settings menu.
    2. Navigate to the Alerts section and open the Alerts tab.
  2. Define Your Monitoring Schedule
    1. Turn Active Monitoring on.
    2. Set your expected on/off schedule so the system knows when screens should be active (e.g., business hours).
      1. If a parent location has no timezone configured, alerts use the server time as default.
  3. Configure Excluded Dates
    1. Add any dates where you don’t want alerts (for example, scheduled maintenance days, holidays, or planned downtime). This prevents unnecessary notifications during expected outages.
  4. Add Alert Recipients
    1. Enter the email addresses that should receive downtime alerts.
    2. You can separate addresses with commas, spaces, semicolons, or line breaks — the system will normalise them into separate entries after saving.
  5. Save and Activate
    1. Save your settings to begin monitoring.
    2. Once active, the system will watch for missing check-ins and send alerts when issues are detected.

Tips & Best Practices

  • Timezone Matters: Always set the correct timezone at the location level to ensure alert schedules align with local business hours.
  • Avoid Spamming: Exclude known maintenance windows and holidays from monitoring to reduce false alarms.
  • Multiple Devices: If multiple displays share the same location, be aware that alerts may behave differently depending on device type (e.g., webOS vs Windows) — some devices report individually while others may aggregate status.
  • Monitoring Scope: Use alerts together with dashboard health views to diagnose issues such as network loss, player app crashes, or content sync failures.

Why This Matters

Proactive monitoring helps you maintain high uptime for your screens — which in turn ensures your internal communications are seen when they matter most. Rather than discovering outages hours later, alerts give you the visibility to act fast and keep your digital signage network healthy.

FAQ

What qualifies as “downtime”?
Downtime refers to any period when a screen fails to report its status within the expected timeframe based on your monitoring schedule. When that happens, an alert is triggered so you can investigate quickly. 


How quickly will I be notified?
Notifications are sent as soon as the system detects a missing check-in based on your defined schedule and alert conditions. Exact timing depends on your monitoring and schedule settings. 

Can I monitor screens outside business hours?
Yes — just configure your on/off schedule to cover the times you care about (e.g., 24/7 monitoring or specific shifts). 

What if I get too many alerts?
Review your schedule and excluded dates — unnecessary alerts often come from monitoring during expected downtime or maintenance. Adjusting these settings helps reduce noise.
Who receives these alerts?
The email addresses you add under “Recipients” in the alert settings will receive notifications when issues occur. You can include multiple team members or escalation contacts.

 

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