<h2>How to monitor a host?</h2>
Use the "Add monitor" link at the top of the dashboard to get a new monitor form. Here you first need to add a host using the green plus sign. This will open a window where you can set the host name or IP address. The description will be displayed together with the host name. Then choose one of the services available.
The next field asks how often the monitor should check the service. Default is one check in five minutes.
Then, configure what notification should be sent when this service goes offline. And how many checks should be negative before a notification is sent. If the service is vital and usually reliable, you can put 1 here. You will get a notification as soon as the service is discovered to be down. If not, the default value of 2 should be fine.
The dependencies determine in what cases a notification will not be sent. For instance, you added a ping monitor for your main router. In case this router goes down, all other hosts will be unreachable as well. All other services should therefore depend on the router ping. If the router goes down, you won't be flooded with notifications with services that you know are unreachable anyway.
<h2>How to configure notifications?</h2>
There are three notification levels by default: "High priority", "Normal", "Low priority". For every notification level you end up using, you need to add actions to do. For instance, at low priority an email might be sent to you ticket system that creates a trouble ticket. At normal priority, an email to your work account is sent. At high priority, an email to the admin group is sent.
In the future, more notification methods - Jabber or SMS, for instance - will be added.
