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Sentinels

Sentinels is where your team reviews what VH3 AI’s sentinels have found: engineers slipping, sites getting worse, customers at risk, and work worth quoting. Open an alert to see why it fired and the jobs behind it, acknowledge it or snooze it, and tune each sentinel so it alerts at the level that suits your operation. Path: /sentinels
The Sentinels page is switched on per company. If Sentinels is missing from your sidebar, ask VH3 support to switch it on.
The Sentinels Overview tab with tiles for Needs you now, Open alerts, Oldest open, Cleared this week and Open opportunities, a Needs you now list and a What changed list

The Overview tab: what needs you now, and what changed since you last looked. Names and addresses are placeholders.

Who sees what

The four tabs

The page opens on Overview. The line at the top right says when the sentinels last checked and when they check next.

Overview

  • Tiles — Needs you now, Open alerts, Oldest open, Cleared this week and Open opportunities. Each tile opens the matching list.
  • Needs you now — critical alerts and alerts that got worse, worst first.
  • What changed — a line such as Since you last looked: 5 new · 2 got worse · 4 cleared, then the latest changes with who made them and when.
  • Charts — alerts opened and cleared over 30 days, open alerts by area and by severity, and the busiest sentinels.
  • Opportunities at a glance — the opportunities ready to pursue.
If the sentinel checks are failing or switched off, a banner says so and warns that the page may be out of date.

Alerts and Opportunities

Alerts lists risks. Opportunities lists work worth pursuing. Both group items by sentinel, worst first, and show a severity count in each group’s header. Use Filters to narrow the list by area, severity or priority. Alerts use critical, warning and info. Opportunities use Urgent, Act soon and Worth a look.

Coverage

Coverage shows every sentinel in a card, grouped by area: Engineers, Sites, Customers, Operations and Opportunities. Each card shows whether the sentinel is on, when it runs, when it last checked and how many alerts are active. Select a card to open its settings. Company settings opens the settings every sentinel shares.
The Sentinels Coverage tab with cards for Engineer Performance Slip, FVF Rate Drop, Workload Imbalance, Site Deterioration, Repeat Failure Escalation, New Problem Site, SLA Breach Cluster and Concurrent Site Jobs

The Coverage tab: one card for each sentinel. Counts are placeholders.

Work an alert

  1. Open Alerts, or select an alert under Needs you now.
  2. Read the alert. On a wide screen it opens beside the list; on a phone it opens as a drawer.
    • Why this fired — the thresholds and the evidence.
    • Involved — the jobs behind the alert. Select a job reference to open the job.
    • What to do — the suggested next step.
    • History — who acknowledged or snoozed it, and when.
  3. Choose an action:
    • Acknowledge — you have seen it and are dealing with it.
    • Snooze — hide it for 7, 14 or 30 days. On an opportunity this is Not now.
    • Reopen — put an acknowledged or snoozed alert back in the open list.
  4. Each action shows Undo for a moment, in case you chose the wrong one.
An alert resolves by itself when the sentinel stops finding the problem. If the problem comes back later, it opens as a new alert. An acknowledged or snoozed alert reopens if it gets worse. To keep a lasting record or hand an alert to an owner, open a Case and assign a Team.

Sentinel settings

Admins and managers change settings. Other roles see them read-only.
Settings for Engineer Performance Slip: an On switch, When it alerts with warning and critical streaks, a minimum number of completed jobs, and What it ignores

Settings for one sentinel open beside the Coverage tab.

One sentinel

Open Coverage and select a sentinel.
  • On or off — switching a sentinel off closes its active alerts. They are recorded as closed by the switch, not as cleared. Switch it back on and current findings return at the next check.
  • When it alerts — each setting reads as a sentence, such as Warn when an engineer has 3 late or problem jobs in a row. A changed setting shows its default and a Reset button. Choose Review to see what will change, then Save.
  • What it ignores — which ignore lists this sentinel uses, with a link to edit them.
  • When it runs — the schedule and the next check. Most sentinels check daily at your company’s set time. SLA Breach Cluster checks every 4 hours.
  • Changes — who changed what, and when.

Company settings

Select Company settings on the Coverage tab.
  • Ignore list — add a site, customer, job type or engineer to leave it out of the sentinels that use that list. Alerts about it clear at the next check. Adding a parent customer offers to add its child accounts too.
  • Emails — who receives sentinel emails. Recipients are admins or managers.
  • Lowest emailed severity — email critical alerts only, warning and critical, or all three. Info alerts always show on the page; they are emailed only when this is set to include info.
  • Changes — every settings change for your company.

Sentinel emails

Sentinel emails carry what changed since the last one:
  • New — alerts seen for the first time.
  • Got worse — alerts whose severity rose.
  • Still open — a reminder for alerts nobody has acted on: daily for critical, weekly for warning and info.
Acknowledged alerts, and snoozed alerts before their date, stay out of the email. When nothing is new, worse or due a reminder, no email is sent.

The sentinels

How sentinels work and how to route their results: Sentinels guide. Running them from your own tools: Sentinels API.