Understanding the Alerts page
In this tutorial, you will learn what the Alerts page shows and how to use it to investigate anomalous events.
An alert is generated when the number of wildlife cases for a given target exceeds the calculated threshold for that target. Thresholds are based on historical case counts for the species and clinical classifications you are watching, so an alert means "this combination is being reported more than expected right now."
Step 1 — Open the Alerts page
Click Alerts in the top banner. The page is organized into three sections:
- Top 5 Alerts — a map showing the geographic distribution of cases for the five highest-priority alerts across the network over the previous 7 days.
- My Alerts — alerts on targets your team has subscribed to. If none of your subscribed targets have exceeded their threshold, this section is empty.
- All Alerts — every alert in your territory, regardless of whether your team is subscribed.
Step 2 — Read the Top 5 map
The map at the top of the page plots cases for the top five active alerts. Each marker represents a case; you can click a marker to see basic details for that case. The map is fixed to the previous 7 days.
Step 3 — Investigate a specific alert
In the My Alerts or All Alerts tables, click a target name to open that target's Results page. From there you can:
- Adjust the date range to see the underlying cases driving the alert.
- Open the Threshold History tab to see how the threshold has trended over time.
- Open the Notifications tab to add or remove team members from email alerts for this target.
Step 4 — Search and filter the alerts list
The All Alerts section provides a search box (matches against the target name) and a toggle labeled Include targets with clinical classifications. Turn the toggle off to hide alerts that include clinical classification filters and focus on alerts defined by taxa and geography alone.
Step 5 — Take action
If you do not yet have any targets, the My Alerts section shows shortcut buttons to Create a Target or View Recent Cases. Creating targets is the first step to receiving alerts — see How to Set up a Surveillance Target for details.