Our Blog
The Derdack SIGNL4 blog is an essential hub for professionals aiming to boost their alert management and operational response. It delivers expert insights and tips on maximizing SIGNL4 for efficient alerting, team collaboration, and incident management. Ideal for IT, operations, and security teams, this blog offers practical guidance for enhancing response times and operational workflows.
July 2022 update – Remote actions for super-fast incident remediation
Our July update ships a very powerful new feature - remote actions. Remote actions are available for execution - once configured - in the SIGNL4 mobile app and allow you to quickly perform remediation actions without having to fire up a notebook and VPN or without...
May 2022 Update 2 – New category features and improved zooming in the scheduler
Our second May update brings partial word matching for category keywords (wildcards), content enrichments for Signls via categories, and an improved zoom level toggle in the duty scheduler. All the details are in this blog article. Fragment search It is now also...
Derdack SIGNL4 Joins Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA)
MISA nomination paves the way for an effective anywhere 24/7 response to security incidents and demonstrates long-term commitment to the Microsoft relationship Richmond, May 1, 2022 Today, Derdack SIGNL4 (www.signl4.com), provider of critical alerting and...
Holiday Import from iCal Files
SIGNL4 helps to reliably alert service technicians in facility management, no matter where they are located.
May 2022 Update – Templates, scheduler enhancements, landline numbers, and more
Our May update brings Signl templates for manual alerting, improvements for duty scheduling and various enhancements in the web portal. Another new feature is the possibility to notify through calling landline numbers. All details can be found in this blog article....
April 2022 Update – Signl categories and duty scheduler improvements
With our April update, we ship some great improvements for Signl categories, category-based alerting and duty scheduling. All details are available in this blog article. Enhanced category matching Category matching can now also be based on text fragments ("keywords")...
Heartbeat check and more – is your monitoring still alive?
SIGNL4 is a cloud-based mobile alerting and incident response service. Third-party systems like monitoring tools, control systems or IoT sensors detect abnormalities and transmit events to SIGNL4 over the Internet. What if your systems cannot transmit critical events...
Feature Update: Enhanced security for call routing
Our interim update from March 15 adds important security features to call forwarding to on-callers. Three new settings have been added for call routing numbers: PIN Allow callers Block callers PIN From now on you can assign a PIN...
February 2022 Update – Centralized and time-based notification patterns
With our February update, it is now possible to centrally configure how Signls should be notified. And of course, each team can have a different configuration of their notification preferences. This also includes response and escalation settings. In addition, it is...
Integration Options with SIGNL4
SIGNL4 integrates with various backend systems like IT monitoring, service management, IoT systems, sensors, etc. to automatically alert users and teams about certain incidents. A list of selected tools along with integration descriptions is available in our...
Scheduling Managers on Duty for Alert Escalation
A question we are hearing often is related to manager escalations, a heavily utilized feature in SIGNL4. Users ask us if those managers can be scheduled. The short answer is 'yes', but you need to use a different feature in SIGNL4 and do a little re-configuration. By...
How to get support?
This post provides an overview on the variety of options and to contact us, if you are seeking technical or other support from the SIGNL4 team. Though, SIGNL4 is designed as a self-service platform and provides an abundance of resources and help, we 'human' provide...
December 2021 Update – On-duty board, Manual Signls and Azure Sentinel update
Our December update brings a 'Who is on duty' board displaying current team members on duty with contact information. In addition, we have simplified the manual sending of Signls and improved the integration with Azure Sentinel. As always, you can find all the details...
A vital alerting solution
This article should give you a first idea of what SIGNL4 does. What do IT security, production monitoring and technical field service have in common? In all these scenarios, the right people need to get notified immediately - in case of technical malfunctions, urgent...
Mobile Service Dispatching for In Plant Transport Logistics at BASF Coatings
„SIGNL4, is a highly intuitive seamless mobile control system for intra-logistics processes. We were looking for an attractive visualization that enables a smooth change management within the teams. Changing process is always a challenge but the greatest sceptics soon...
Publish SIGNL4 oncall and alert information to your Grafana dashboard
Grafana is as open source analytics and interactive visualization application. You can connect different data sources to display chart and graphs or even trigger alerts. Wouldn't it be great to add information about SIGNL4 alerts or about who is on call as part of...
November 2021 Update – Improved incident response with team escalation and more
Our November update introduces new team settings and, along with them, entirely new options for escalating Signls. This will allow you to make your incident response even more reliable. One application is to create a 'managers on duty' teams with full duty scheduling...
Building Automated Monitoring with Icinga and SIGNL4
How many servers can be managed by one system administrator? This question is not an easy one since it definitely depends on the tasks that need to be operated. However, it´s quite clear that the amount of servers one engineer can manage has increased enormously over...
Android App Update: Mute and enhanced ‘Do not disturb’ override
With our latest Android app update (3.1., build 242) you will never miss a critical SIGNL4 alert again. Even if your phone is muted or in do-not-disturb mode, SIGNL4 can now make a lot of 'noise' and wake you up reliably when a major or critical incident occurs. Here...
Why Net at Work employees are sleeping soundly
Meet a typical challenge of 24/7 IT operations Net at Work is a German IT company with over 100 employees that provides its customers with solutions and tools for digital communication and collaboration. Their product NoSpamProxy offers reliable protection against...
September 2021 Update: Routing voice calls to on-call staff
Yippie! Our September update adds live call routing as well as a voice mailbox with notification feature to SIGNL4. All details can be found in this article. The scenario The typical scenario for call routing is to offer a hotline for partners, clients or staff and...
Automatic Alert Export to Third-Party Systems
In the SIGNL4 web portal you can manually export historic alert reports as .csv files. In some cases it might be useful to export alert data programmatically. For example you can forward all alerts including specific parameters to InfluxDB and show the alert history...
Thank you for your fantastic reviews of our mobile alerting app!
We would like to thank our loyal customers for the numerous reviews of SIGNL4! We are excited that you share your opinion on various rating platforms with other people and support us. Why we work with G2Crowd and Capterra G2Crowd is the largest B2B marketplace for...
July 2021 Update: Users can be members of multiple teams
The time has come! Users in SIGNL4 can now be a member of multiple teams. This allows for staff to be on duty in multiple groups or departments in parallel and to receive related alert notifications for incidents that occur in the different teams. In addition, you can...
Duty Schedule Import from Third-Party Systems
SIGNL4 helps to reliably alert service technicians in facility management, no matter where they are located.
5 typical mistakes in alerting and how to avoid them
A good alerting strategy is an important prerequisite for successful operations management and the availability of mission-critical systems. But also for employee satisfaction. It's not just about sending out alerts upon critical conditions, problems and failures at...
Alerting of Service Technicians in Facility Management
SIGNL4 helps to reliably alert service technicians in facility management, no matter where they are located.
Three fundamental tips for an effective event filtering in SIGNL4
Event and alert filtering matters because alert fatigue is one of the most crucial issues in alerting and alert management. SIGNL4 implements a lightweight and effective way of filtering events. The overall process is based on alert categories. Alert categories are...
Adding Rich Content to Alerts, Work Orders or Service Requests
When you send alerts, work orders or service requests to your workers in the field, on the shop floor or campus it is essential to provide them with all relevant information necessary to solve the task. This prevents misunderstandings, avoids waste work, time for...
February 2021 Update: Copy duty slots, password change and 2-way integration with ServiceNow and Checkmk
With our February 2021 update, we have added more features to our account management portal. We've now added a copy mode to the duty and shift calendar providing an even better shift and duty scheduling experience. You can now also monitor your personal profile and...
2-way integration with ConnectWise Manage
SIGNL4 now includes a new app for connecting to ConnectWise Manage ("Manage"). This makes 2-way integration with Manage a breeze, and responding to service desk tickets can now be done conveniently via mobile app in SIGNL4. This blog article has all the important...
Segment and SIGNL4: Know your Customer’s Actions, Anywhere and Anytime
You have a web site, app, online shop, or SaaS offering? Then you have plenty of user actions. That can be visiting a certain page, signing up for a service or canceling a subscription. Wouldn’t it be great to know in real time when an important customer action takes...
December 2020 Update: Multiple teams, new user management and enterprise licensing
Our December update lets it rip once again: From now on, you can create and manage multiple teams in your SIGNL4 subscription. For this purpose, we have also added a new user role and enhanced our web app. This makes it much easier to centrally manage multiple...
October 2020 Update: Mute overwrite for iPhone (Critical Alerts), undo and more
Our October update brings the long-awaited mute-overwrite on iPhone ('critical alerts'). We also introduce an undo action for Signl acknowledgements or closures. And in the web app you can now batch-ack and close to multiple Signls at once. All new features are...
How SIGNL4 provides for a digital handover procedure
Handover procedures in operations and maintenance are a key element of business continuity. As work in this field is usually organized in shifts, it is essential to keep track of any critical incidents, machine breakdowns, job ownership, completion, issues that are...
Why you need to stop the handover of that shared on-call duty phone
If you are still handing over a shared on-call duty phone or pager (sometimes called 'operations phone'), it is time to rethink your process. The Covid19-induced new normal has a dramatic impact on our work live and social behavior. We work from home and that is...
September 2020 Update: All-new Webhook and API Key Management
Our September update provides you with self-service API key management from the SIGNL4 web portal. Finally, you can fully exploit our comprehensive REST API. We also improved management of outbound webhook which can update your systems with any information on Signl...
No More False Alerts at Night
Do you know this situation? You are on-call and in the middle of the night you get a phone call. Loud enough to wake you up. Loud enough to wake your wife up, as well. You stand up and check your emails to see what the problem is. OK, you got it. Then you log on to...
How SIGNL4 solves typical problems in network monitoring
A new article in the September issue of German magazine LANLine ("Automation creates productivity") summarizes typical challenges and problems in network monitoring very well and is worth reading. I would like to briefly discuss some of the problems addressed and how...
Website Monitoring with SIGNL4
SIGNL4's core job is to reliably alert operational teams. However, we've been asked a couple of times if SIGNL4 can also monitor a website's uptime. Well, we developed an app and it is now available in the SIGNL4 app gallery. You can now monitor the availability of...
August 2020 Update: Manage service and system categories in the web portal and define responsibilities centrally
Our August update now makes it easy to assign team responsibilities for individual systems through our categories. This is no longer only possible by each team member in the mobile app, but can now also be done centrally in the web portal by the team administrator....
July 2020 Update: Close alerts in SIGNL4 when the issue was resolved in the backend
Our July update brings new features to the email and webhook API's. You can now close alerts in SIGNL4 when the issue was resolved in your backend system. Use Case A typical use case is IT monitoring and auto-recovery. Imagine you get an alert in the middle of the...
Press Release: SIGNL4 Now Available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace
Microsoft Azure customers worldwide now gain access to SIGNL4 to take advantage of the scalability, reliability and agility of Azure to drive application development and shape business strategies. Richmond, June 15 2020 Today, Derdack (www.signl4.com), provider of...
Business Continuity Planning and Effective Communication – by Laura Toplis
With many companies utilizing remote-working during the COVID-19 pandemic, effective communication is more important than ever. Unfortunately, being in the middle of responding to a global pandemic will not prevent your organization from suffering from other business...
May 2020 Update: Alert management and chat in web portal and upcoming duties in the mobile app
Our May update brings new features to our Signl Center in the web app and adds a new view that displays your upcoming duties to the mobile app! Upcoming Duties Preview When part of an on-call duty team, your private life and work-life-balance are pretty much affected....
April 2020 Update: Goodbye “I never got that alert” and emergency alerting – the new Signl Center
Our April update is BIG. It introduces emergency alerting to reach you entire team. We hope this will be a bit of humble support to your organization in this Covid-19 crisis. The core of this release is the new signl center, the new place to track alerts and their...
How SIGNL4 supports geolocation and GPS information
SIGNL4 provides great support for geolocation information and in multiple ways. When a new alert with geolocation information is displayed in the mobile app, the app renders a map to visualize geographic information of the incident. A double click allows to open the...
How to create user groups and route alerts
"Servcies&Systems" category subscriptions provide a highly flexible way of routing alerts to specific user groups. This can for instance be used to route alerts based on responsibilities or skills. But other scenarios are possible too as the category subscription...
Chatbot integration with Microsoft Teams and Slack
SIGNL4 provides plug-and-play chatbot integrations with Microsoft Teams and Slack, both via certified chatbot apps. Why does it makes sense to integrate SIGNL4 with chat tools after all? There are two basic uses cases that we address with the integration into Teams...
February 2020 Update: Legacy Pager Support, Scheduler User Role, Improved Duty Report and Microsoft Teams Bot
Our first SIGNL4 release tin 2020 includes some great new features. Have a look: Notify your Legacy Pager For all those who still need to work with pager devices in addition to their smartphone, it is now possible to include this device in the alarm workflow. This...
