Monitoring & Alerts

Purpose

Monitoring and alerts help organisations move from occasional manual review to continuous Configuration Governance.

This chapter describes concepts and behaviour; step-by-step operating guidance sits outside this reference.

Monitoring dimensions

ConfigCompare can support monitoring across combinations of:

Environment.
Company.
Module.
User-defined group.
Form.
Table.
Column.
Time.

Scheduled monitoring

Scheduled Snapshots and Scheduled Comparisons allow organisations to monitor change without requiring a manual comparison every time.

This is important for production governance, managed services, compliance review, hypercare, and support triage.

Alerts and notifications

ConfigCompare supports alerts and notifications of comparison results.

Alerts can draw attention to relevant Differences and Matches, especially when combined with Rulesets that classify importance and Responsibility.

Alerts are configured on a comparison result whose assessment level meets a severity threshold. Each Comparison nominates a notification group and the threshold itself (labelled Error threshold in the product): the assessment severity at or above which the group is notified. Notifications can be delivered by email or through the D365 Action Center. Comparison result grids prioritise results by assessment severity, so the most severe findings surface first.

Undesired Matches are equally valid alert conditions. For example, when a Production database is restored to a downstream environment such as UAT, production endpoints and integration settings may remain in place. A Comparison showing that these values still match Production is a serious governance finding, and alerts can escalate it with the same urgency as a critical Difference.

Operating model: exception-based governance

Continuous monitoring does not require a dedicated person watching comparisons.

The automated pattern combines capabilities described in earlier chapters into a single scheduled batch job:

A Scheduled Snapshot is captured, for example at 06:00 on weekdays.
Instant Comparison pairs the new Snapshot with the previous Snapshot from the same environment and description (Chapter 06: Snapshots).
A nominated Ruleset assesses the results (Chapter 08: Rulesets).
Results at or above the Comparison’s severity threshold trigger notification to the nominated group.

Humans are engaged only when results exceed the threshold. Governance operates by exception: nobody reviews quiet comparisons, and nothing above the threshold goes unseen.

Proactive governance

Without monitoring, configuration changes are often discovered after a test failure, support issue, compliance request, or operational problem.

With monitoring, Differences and undesired Matches can be identified before they create business impact.