Alerts Overview

What are Alerts?

Alerts are a way to have important information from your Spike Panels sent to you via email or Slack.

NewsWhip supports both real-time and scheduled alerts. For real-time alerts, you can set the criteria that will trigger the alert. For scheduled alerts, you set the frequency and time that you want it to arrive (e.g., get the top Automotive stories in your inbox every morning at 8am).

Why would I use Alerts?

You should use alerts if:

• You need to know about the stories predicted to have the biggest impact in your industry today.
• You need to know about potential threats to your brand, e.g.,
• A story, or social post, that @mentions your brand in a negative context.
• A competitor @mentions your brand or products.
• an influencer @mentions your brand or products.
• You need to keep track of influential accounts or sites.
• You want a daily digest of the top stories in your industry.

How do I use Alerts?

You can create alerts from two locations in Spike:

1. Alerts Center in the sidebar.

2. Alerts Bell at the top of every saved Panel.

To create a notification, select “Create Alert” and follow the steps below:

Step 1 Select a Panel You can choose any of your saved panels. All Networks are supported, as are Team Panels. Syndication panels are the only exception.
Step 2 Choose type of alert.
Step 3 Set your alert preferences. You can select the criteria that will trigger the alert (if real-time) or the time and frequency of the alert (if scheduled)
Step 4 Choose delivery method. By default, your alerts will be sent by email to the address we have on record. You can switch to Slack alerts if you wish, and have the alerts sent to any #Channel or @User in your workspace.

Types of Real-Time Alerts.

When creating an alert, you can set the criteria that will trigger it. You can choose from:

Advanced options

Custom Alerts: Choosing a “Threshold”.

When entering a threshold value, we’ll provide feedback on the number of articles that currently qualify. This feedback should help you when first setting your threshold at the right level.

You can easily adjust your threshold at any time, based on the quantity or quality of the alerts that you’re receiving.

Custom Alerts: Choosing a Time.

The time you set determines the maximum age of an article that we’ll send you. Use a short-time period (e.g., 1hr) if speed is the most important factor to you - e.g. for a Breaking News panel. Use a long-time period (e.g., 12hrs) if coverage is the most important factor to you.

With a shorter Time, your alerts will arrive soon after the story begins to trend - but you may miss “slow-burning” stories. With a longer Time, your alerts may arrive a little later - but you’ll catch “slow-burning” stories.

FAQ

How fast are your Alerts?

• “Any Story” alerts:  You’ll be notified within 2-3mins of the story / post being published.
• “Custom” alerts: You’ll be notified within 5 mins of the article reaching the threshold.

What happened to our old real-time alerts?

They’re still available. Just select “Popular articles” when creating a real-time alert.

Can I schedule alerts to my boss/colleague/team?

Using Slack, yes.

At this time, we don’t allow you to add additional email recipients to an alert. We may add this functionality in the future. In the meantime, you can set-up auto-forward rules within your mail client.

I’m receiving too many/too few results.

We recommend following these steps:

1. Check your panel: If you’re missing important results, you should extend the search; if you’re getting noise, you should refine the search to exclude the noise.
2. Check your alerts: What are your current settings? If you have selected, “Any Story” then you should consider switching to Custom and adding a Threshold. If your alert is already Custom, then you should consider adjusting your threshold.