This is where you create new Alert Types and edit existing ones.

When creating a new Alert Type:

Select an Object
  The object you select will be the subject of the events that will trigger your alerts. After selecting an object, click the Next button.
Select an Event Type
  Select an event type relevant to the object you selected before. It is the triggering of the type of event you choose here that will in turn trigger your alert. This screen also requires you to choose a name for your alert type. The name can be anything you want. Finally, you must select the owner of the alert type. By default this will be you, but you can choose another user. Each owner can only have one alert type of the same name. Click the Next button when you are ready to go on.

The last screen you encounter when creating a new Alert Type is also the screen you use to edit existing Alert Types. Here you can set rules, edit the alert contents, and designate the alert recipients.

Properties
  The first three properties were discussed above. The Active property determines whether the alert will actually be sent when the corresponding event occurs. By default, the alert is active, but you can uncheck the checkbox to make it inactive.
Rules
  Rules must be determined to be true for an event in order for it to trigger an alert. A rule compares data related to the event (the "attribute") to a value that you enter. (One thing to note here is that "Trig" is short for "Triggerer", that is the user who triggered the event.) Comparisons are case-insensitive (it doesn't matter if you enter upper or lower case letters) and use one of a number of operators to compare the value:
  =
    Equal. This will probably be the most-frequently used operator. It is true if the value exactly matches the event data.
  <>
    Not equal. It is true if the value does not exactly match the event data.
  >
    Greater than.
  <
    Less than.
  >=
    Greater than or equal.
  <=
    Less than or equal.
  =~
    Match against a Perl regular expression. Explaining regular expressions is outside the scope of this documentation, but here are a few examples:
    Partially match a value
      Whereas using "=" above matches the value exactly, if you enter something here it will match anywhere within the string. For example, a value of `Spain` would match "Barcelona, Spain".
    Match one of several values
      You can separate several values by '|', and this will match any of those values. For example, `Spain|France|England` would match any of those three countries. Note that to require that all of those values match, you would use three separate "=" rules.
    A fuzzy value
      Say you wanted to match either "Paris, France" or "Paratroopers in France". You could use this value: `Par.*France. The '.' means any character, and following it by a '*' means to match any number of characters.`
  !~
    Don't match a Perl regular expression. This is the opposite of "=~".
Content
  This is the content that will be sent in the alert. The subject will be the subject of the email, and the message is the body of the email. You can enter whatever you want into the text fields, but by using the select menus you can add event-specific information. There is a menu for each field, and they are provided for convenience in inserting "variables" into the fields. Whenever you select an item from the menu, it automatically goes into the field. The values in the menu correspond to the "attributes" in the Rules section above. You don't even have to use the menus; you can just enter the variable directly into the field. Note that dollar signs (`$`) are special because they indicate variables, so to include a literal dollar sign you have to precede it with a backslash, like `Cost: \$500`.
Recipients
  Recipients are those users who will receive this alert. There are three types of "contact" that can be sent emails: Primary Email, Secondary Email, and Pager Email. Note especially that you set these values in the User Profile, where user accounts are edited. If you select a recipient to receive an event, but the user doesn't have the contact information entered in their User Profile, they won't receive the event. Users with multiple addresses will be sent alerts to each of those addresses.

When you are done, click the Save button at the bottom, or Cancel to discard your changes. To delete the Alert Type, check the "Delete this Profile" button and click Save.

For more information on Alerts, see Bric::Alert.