Alert rules

An alert rule watches the prices Omnilinker collects and notifies people when one crosses a line you set: an offer going more than 5% below your reference price, a price moving by 10% at once, your margin at a competitor’s price falling under 15%. Notifications arrive in the notification bell and the inbox, and reach each person the way they chose in their notification settings. Open Pricing Intelligence > Alert Rules.

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Before you start

• You need the Alert Rules permission, under Pricing Intelligence, to see the page. Its sub-permissions Create, Edit, Delete, Enable/Disable Alert Rules and Test Alert Rules cover the rest; see Permissions.
• Rules fire on prices that data sources collect. Your products need matched listings and running data sources; see Product matching.
• How a notification reaches each person (the bell, email, a digest, quiet hours) is set in their own notification settings, not in the rule. See How I get notified.

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How a rule is checked

Each time a data source records a new price for an offer, Omnilinker checks every rule that is on against that offer:

1. Scope. The offer’s product must be in the rule’s scope, and its merchant too when the rule names merchants.
2. Availability. An observation the source reported as Not available is skipped: it is not a price a customer can pay. See Availability.
3. Snooze and limit. A snoozed rule does nothing. A rule that sends one alert each time does nothing while its limit is running; see How often.
4. Conditions. The rule fires when its conditions match: all of them, or any one of them.

When a rule fires, Omnilinker records the fire (you see it on the rule’s row) and notifies the rule’s recipients. Prices you add by hand on the Offers page are not checked.

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Create a rule

You need the Create permission. A message in the builder warns you before you save a rule that cannot work as written:

• “As written, this rule can never fire: it watches a signal this account does not collect.”
• “Part of this rule can never match. It will still fire through its other branches.”
• “No product matches these narrowings — this rule will never fire.”
• “A rule with no conditions can never match anything.”

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Templates

A template only fills in the builder. Change anything before you save. A blank rule starts with one condition, Price Change (%) is at most −5, severity Medium and an hourly digest. The template you start from also sets the title of the notifications, for example ”… undercut …: …” for Undercut watch. A rule started blank sends notifications titled as a price change: ”… changed …% at …”.

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Conditions

A condition compares one figure about the newly recorded price with your threshold, using is below, is at most, is above or is at least. Some figures cannot be measured:

• Price vs Comparison needs a reference price in the offer’s currency. A product with no reference, one in another currency, or (for the percentage) a reference of zero or less never matches.
• Margin needs a known purchase price in the offer’s currency. A product whose purchase price is unknown never matches. See Purchase prices.
• Price Change needs a previous price. A Price Change (%) condition does not match when the previous price was zero.

The picker also lists Competitor Price Difference, Competitor Count Change, Compliance Rate Below, Days Since Last Update and Competitor Rank, greyed out: “This account does not collect this signal”. Omnilinker does not collect these signals yet, so a rule built on them can never fire.

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Scope

Click “for …” in the sentence to choose What this rule watches. With nothing narrowed, the rule watches every tracked product, and the sentence says how many. Each list takes up to 100 items. The count beside the scope (“N of M products”) updates as you narrow it.

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Who hears about it, and how often

Notify lists the people the rule notifies, up to 100. Leave it empty and the rule notifies whoever created it. To pick other people, you need permission to list users; without it, the field says “You cannot list people on this account, so this rule will notify whoever created it. Ask an administrator to add others.” The permission is User management under Identity management; see Permissions. Send:

• an hourly digest: “Everything that matched in an hour arrives as one message.” Every match is recorded, and the notifications wait for the recipient’s digest instead of interrupting them. A Critical rule still interrupts.
• one alert each time: “Each match arrives on its own, subject to the limit below.” and never more than sets the limit: once every 15 min, 30 min (the default), 1 h, 3 h, 6 h, 12 h or 1 d. The limit counts across the whole rule, not per product: after an alert, the rule sends nothing until the limit has passed.

Severity: Info, Low, Medium (the default for a blank rule), High or Critical. High and Critical are shown in the bell with a high priority; lower severities are shown in the bell and counted in the digest. Severity does not escalate on its own and does not change who is notified. Each recipient’s notification settings decide how each severity reaches them.

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Test a rule against history

Test against history replays the rule over the prices Omnilinker has stored. Nothing is sent and nothing is saved. You need the Test Alert Rules permission. Open it from the builder, or from a rule’s ⋮ menu on the list. What a replay can and cannot count:

• Absolute Price, Price Change (%), Price Change (Absolute), Margin (%), Margin (Absolute) and Price vs Comparison (%) can be replayed. Price vs Comparison (Absolute) cannot; the picker marks it “Cannot be replayed over stored prices”. A rule with a condition that cannot be replayed shows a bound (“at least”, “at most”) instead of a count.
• Price vs Comparison (%) is replayed against each product’s reference price as it is today. Products whose reference changed inside the window, or that have none on record, are left out, so the real total is at least the number shown.
• Margin is replayed against the purchase price known when each price was recorded. Prices older than the product’s purchase price history are left out.
• A product first seen yesterday counts from yesterday. A very large scope may be replayed only in part; the result then says the numbers are a floor.
• When nothing can be replayed, the test checks the rule against today’s prices instead: “On today’s prices this rule matches N of M products.”

The builder’s If this had been on panel shows the same replay over the last 7 days, and What you will receive previews a notification from it.

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The list of rules

The list shows every rule, with what it watches and whether it is actually firing. The chips above the list filter it by health: A snoozed rule shows Snoozed and when it listens again. When rules cannot fire or have never fired, a strip above the list says how many, with a link that shows them. You can also search by name and filter by Severity, Alert Type and on/off state. The caption next to the filters counts the alerts recorded in the last 7 days. If you have more rules than fit, the list says “Showing the first N of M rules — narrow with the search or the filters.”

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A rule’s details

Click a rule to expand it:

• The rule, in words: the rule as a sentence. A condition that can never be true is marked.
• Recent fires: the last 5 fires, each with the measured value against the threshold. Open opens the offer on the Offers page. Not sent means the rule matched but had no one to notify.
• Full log (or View trigger log in the ⋮ menu) shows the last 50 fires.

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Manage rules

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What a notification looks like

Each alert names the product, the merchant and the price, for example ”… changed …% at …” or ”… below MAP at …: …”. It lists the merchant, the price, the previous price, the change and the rule, and opens the offer on the Offers page. Alerts from one rule are grouped together (”…: N alerts”). See Inbox.

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Troubleshooting

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Permissions