Using the Pager notification

Question

Using the Pager notification

Adam Bean

One Orange Chip

Points: 26631
More actions
May 29, 2008 at 12:30 pm

#121632

Hey all,
Can't seem to find much documentation, but as a short term solution I'd like to page myself upon a SQL Agent job failure. Being that pagers are more or less dead, I was assuming that you could treat this option as a text message, yet I am not making any progress. Does this notification truly only work with pagers? I've tried my cell phone # as is, as well as the text message address (@vtext.com [Verizon]). I currently use the email operator to send to a group, so I can't use that and simply email a text message ... Unless there is a way to have multiple operators for the same notification?
Thanks

Viewing 14 posts - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply

Kyle Neier , SSCrazy Points: 2252 More actions · Answer 1

I use this feature regularly for SQL Agent jobs and it seems to work fine.

Set up your operator with the pager e-mail name of 5551234567@vtext.com. You can then select that user as the "Page" within the notifications tab of the job.

The e-mail operator is independent of the page operator, however, I've been unsuccessful at having multiple operators be contacted via the same means (e-mail / page) without setting up a distribution group.

If you need multiple people paged, consider having your e-mail admin set up distribution group of contacts that contain all the pagers to be notified. Use that e-mail address as the Page Email of the operator.

Kyle

Michael Earl-395764 SSC Guru Points: 53873 More actions · Answer 2

Here is another post that may solve your issue:

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic447196-146-1.aspx#bm447265

You can supply an operator with multiple email addresses - put a semicolon between them.

Kyle Neier , SSCrazy Points: 2252 More actions · Answer 3

I stand corrected... and now have a solution for when the e-mail admins are argumentative.

100 characters for multiple e-mail addresses is limiting, but, even with that restriction, it is still a valuable tool for the arsenal.

Thanks!

Kyle

Adam Bean One Orange Chip Points: 26631 More actions · Answer 4

Kyle Neier (5/29/2008)
I use this feature regularly for SQL Agent jobs and it seems to work fine.
Set up your operator with the pager e-mail name of 5551234567@vtext.com. You can then select that user as the "Page" within the notifications tab of the job.
The e-mail operator is independent of the page operator, however, I've been unsuccessful at having multiple operators be contacted via the same means (e-mail / page) without setting up a distribution group.
If you need multiple people paged, consider having your e-mail admin set up distribution group of contacts that contain all the pagers to be notified. Use that e-mail address as the Page Email of the operator.
Kyle

Odd, I tried with and without @vtext.com and it does not work when using as page. Yet it works just fine when using it as the email notification.

Any thoughts?

Kyle Neier , SSCrazy Points: 2252 More actions · Answer 5

When you are trying to get the page to work, are you modifying both the operator contact information and the notification tab of the job?

Adam Bean One Orange Chip Points: 26631 More actions · Answer 6

Kyle Neier (5/29/2008)
When you are trying to get the page to work, are you modifying both the operator contact information and the notification tab of the job?

Indeed.

Kyle Neier , SSCrazy Points: 2252 More actions · Answer 7

Walking through some troubleshooting steps:

I've not had one work and the other not on any system. I've had issues in the past where the e-mail server would not let the profile I was using send to an external address, but that should affect both the e-mail and the pager (there is a presumption there). Since it works with the e-mail, I'd presume it is not a configuration problem or an authentication problem.

Is the dropdown for the notification set the same between both e-mail and pager? I know that the default is on failure so if your e-mail notification is set on job completion or success, maybe that could be it?

Can you verify the operator settings and make certain that the phone number is accurate in the pager section.

Are there any errors in the SQL Agent or Database Mail log?

Kyle

Adam Bean One Orange Chip Points: 26631 More actions · Answer 8

Is the dropdown for the notification set the same between both e-mail and pager?

Yep. The operator is set to My#@vtext.com. I've set the notification for both e-mail and page to this operator. Neither appears to receive it. Yet I can email this address (via exchange, or gmail) without error. The odd thing is though, if I use dbmail, it does not work. So it would appear that this isn't an operator or notification issue.

Are there any errors in the SQL Agent or Database Mail log?

None. But I just checked sysmail_log and found this: The mail could not be sent to the recipients because of the mail server failure. (Sending Mail using Account 3 (2008-05-30T07:51:12). Exception Message: Cannot send mails to mail server. (Mailbox unavailable. The server response was: 5.7.1 Unable to relay for My#@vtext.com). )

So this is either a databasemail or exchange issue at this point. Any thoughts?

Thanks

Michael Earl-395764 SSC Guru Points: 53873 More actions · Answer 9

Your Exchange server is probably not configured to allow an SMTP relay to an outside mailbox. You either need to have your Exchange admin set this up, or add the vtext email address to your GAL.

Adam Bean One Orange Chip Points: 26631 More actions · Answer 10

Yeah talking to him now ... Looks like it is something they have to setup.

Thanks all!

Adam Bean One Orange Chip Points: 26631 More actions · Answer 11

Ok, exchange is now good. I can use database mail to send just fine.

Yet still not working for a notification operator. It works If I use the email notification, but not pager. In the operator setup I have the address in both email and pager. Yet as stated, only email notification works when using it from a job.

Thoughts?

Adam Bean One Orange Chip Points: 26631 More actions · Answer 12

So looks like by default you can't send emails to a phone as a page ... and the only way to receive a text message from SQL is via the email notification right? I think I'm still missing something glaringly obvious ...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms179336.aspx

Pager notification

Paging is implemented by e-mail. For pager notification, you provide the e-mail address where the operator receives pager messages. To set up pager notification, you must install software on the mail server that processes inbound mail and converts it to a pager message. The software can take one of several approaches, including:

Forwarding the mail to a remote mail server at the site of the pager provider.

The pager provider must offer this service, although the software required is generally available as part of the local mail system. For more information, see your pager documentation.

Routing the e-mail by way of the Internet to an e-mail server at the pager provider's site.

This is a variation on the first approach.

Processing the inbound e-mail and dialing the pager by using an attached modem.

This software is proprietary to pager service providers. The software acts as a e-mail client that periodically processes its inbox either by interpreting all or part of the e-mail address information as a pager number, or by matching the e-mail name to a pager number in a translation table.

If all of the operators share a pager provider, you can use SQL Server Management Studio to specify any special e-mail formatting that is required by the pager-to-e-mail system. The special formatting can be a prefix or a suffix and can be included in the following lines of the e-mail:

Adam Bean One Orange Chip Points: 26631 More actions · Answer 13

Ok, I had to define a pager schedule ... and now it's working.

I feel smart.

Thanks for all the help!