Refine Rules

After rulebases are built and performing roughly as designed, you can fine-tune them as follows:

Increase rule efficiency by considering ways to faster and better respond to monitored conditions. Advanced testing and action options might be more efficient. Consider using different metrics, or changing thresholds.
Maximize the information content of messages by using variable substitution to add information from a data source to your alerts and notifications.
Consider other monitoring options such as building your own scripts, or instrumenting an application with an AMI interface.
Increase the automation of your monitoring effort as you see possibilities to automate tasks you now do yourself. For example, using escalation to automate a scaled response to a continuing problem can eliminate the need for intervention. Adding a true test counter to a test can reduce the number of false alarms.