Quickstart: get an email when a machine goes down

One rule, one recipient, one alert you have watched arrive.

A rule pairs a condition IoTFlows watches for with the channels that carry it, and is set one machine at a time. This page builds one: an email to you when a machine has been stopped for longer than a number of minutes you choose. It takes about ten minutes, plus the wait for the test alert in step 5. Work on the web, at /assets.

Every other event type and channel is on Set alert rules for a machine.

Before you start, you need:

A machine with a sensor, reporting now, see Add a machine.
Owner or Administrator, to subscribe anyone other than yourself, see Roles and permissions.
A moment when you can stop that machine on purpose. Step 5 is the part teams skip, and the only part that proves the rule works.

Open the notification settings for a machine

Click Assets in the top navigation.
Click the machine you want to be told about. Its page opens at /assets/selected-asset/:id.
Click the bell in the row of icons at the top right of the header. Its tooltip reads Event Notifications.

The modal opens on the full grid of rules for this machine, headed Event Notifications over Configure alerts for critical machine conditions. Only the first section, Machine Status, matters today.

Nothing here is staged. The footer reads Changes are saved automatically, so Done closes the modal rather than saving it.

The top right of a machine's page. A violet highlight rings the bell icon in the row of icons above the uptime figures, and the tooltip it opens reads Event Notifications

Opening notification settings for one machine.

Turn on Machine Down

Machine Status is the first section, and its first row is the one you want. It carries an amber WARNING chip where a title would be, over the description "Triggered when asset stops running for specified duration".

The chip replaces the title, so tell the two Machine Down rows apart by color. The red CRITICAL row below is the same event at a longer time. Leave it alone today.

There is no switch for the event itself and no Add rule button. All ten event types are always present, and a rule goes live the moment a channel carries it, which happens in step 4.

The top of the MACHINE STATUS section, cropped. A violet highlight rings the amber WARNING chip on the first row, which sits above the description Triggered when asset stops running for specified duration and beside a time threshold of 15 min(s). The red CRITICAL row below it reads 60. The EMAIL and PUSH columns on the right are dashed empty circles on both rows

Turning on Machine Down for this machine.

Set the time threshold

A threshold is the number the condition is measured against. Here it is how many whole minutes the machine has to stay stopped before the event fires.

Click the Time threshold field in the middle of the row. min(s) sits beside it.
Type the number of minutes.
Click anywhere outside the field, and wait for the Threshold updated confirmation.

The value is written when the field loses focus, so closing the modal before you click out loses what you typed. The field opens on the downtime alert time stored on the machine, and reads 0 if the machine has none.

Set the threshold above your normal changeover. A five-minute threshold on a machine that changes over in twelve emails you all day, and you will turn it off by Thursday. For a machine that changes over in ten minutes, start at 15.

The Time threshold control on the Machine Down warning row, cropped close. A narrow numeric field reads 15, the suffix min(s) sits to its right, and a violet highlight rings the pair

The time threshold. Set it above your normal changeover, or it will fire all day.

A subscriber is one person signed up to one event type on one machine. The Email column is a list of people rather than a switch, and an empty list is a rule that reaches nobody.

Click the cell in the Email column of the Machine Down warning row. It is a dashed circle with a + while nobody is subscribed.
Find yourself at the top of the member list, tagged (You). Search in Search members... if you would rather.
Click your name.

A check appears beside you, and a toast confirms with your first name, for example Maria subscribed. Close the dropdown. The rule is live.

Not an Owner or Administrator? Everyone else sees Email, Push and SMS as plain switches that subscribe only themselves. Flip the one in the Email column, wait for Event notification ON, and the rest of this page works the same.

The list belongs to this event type on this machine. Subscribing to Machine Down on the Haas VF-2 tells you nothing about Device Offline on the same machine, and nothing about the Doosan 2600 beside it. This is the most common reason a rule that looks correct emails nobody, see Email, push and SMS subscriber lists.

If Failed to update email subscription appears, the avatar disappears again and nobody was added. Retry, then reopen the modal to check the list.

Adding yourself as an email subscriber. Enabling the channel alone emails nobody.

Stop the machine and confirm the alert

An untested alert rule is one you find out about during the failure it was supposed to catch. Test this one now.

Run the machine for a minute or two, so IoTFlows records it as running.
Stop it.
Wait the threshold, then a couple of minutes more.
Check your inbox.

If the threshold you set is longer than you want to stand at the machine, lower it for the test and put it back before you close the modal. A rule tested at 2 minutes and left at 2 minutes is the rule you switch off by Thursday.

The delivered alert email, open in a mail client. It is from alerts@iotflows.com, addressed to me, and its subject reads Machine Down - Doosan 2600 (TXV-2600) with the date and time. The body says This asset has not been utilized for more than the set threshold (15 min), then names the machine, its ID and department, shows an idle time of 17 min, and offers a View Dashboard button

The alert as it arrives. Verify by actually stopping the machine.

Nothing arrived? Work down this list in order.

Reopen the modal and check the Email cell on the Machine Down warning row itself. Subscriber lists are per event type.
Check the machine recorded the stop. Its status bar on the machine page shows a red stretch for the time it was down. Gray means the sensor sent nothing, see Troubleshoot a device that is offline.
Check your spam folder, then ask a colleague on the same list whether they got it.

Every other symptom is on Troubleshoot alerts you did not receive.

What to set up next

You have a working example. Extend it in this order.

Turn on Log for the same event. It records each stop on the machine's Health tab without telling anybody, which is what makes "this machine went down eleven times this month" answerable, see Review and dismiss machine events.
Add the people who act on the stop, not everybody who would like to know. Same dropdown, same event type.
Repeat on your other machines. Rules are stored per machine, so steps 1 to 4 run again on each one.

You do not need an integration, an automatic work order, or SMS to get alerts. Email and push reach people with nothing configured beyond a subscriber list. Add SMS only for events someone has to act on within the hour, and add a chat integration only for a channel your shift already reads, see Send alerts to Slack, Teams, or Discord.