Nobody can watch every number in a growing business all day. Data alerts in Zoho Analytics do the watching for you: you set a condition on a report, and Zoho Analytics tells you when it is met, so you can act in time. This guide explains what data alerts are, how to create one, and how to choose where the alert goes. It replaces an earlier note from April 2020 that only linked to Zoho's help.
What you can set an alert on
- Views: charts, pivot views, and summary views.
- Conditions: you choose a column and an operator, and you can combine conditions. Zoho Analytics joins multiple conditions with AND by default, and you can switch to OR.
- Thresholds: if a view already has a threshold value, an alert can fire when values pass it.
- Anomalies: an alert can also be based on anomalies that Zoho Analytics identifies in a view.
Create an alert
- Open the report in View mode.
- Click the Alert icon, then Create Alert.
- Give the alert a name and set the condition that should trigger it.
- In the How often section, choose how frequently Zoho Analytics should check your data: hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly.
- Choose where the alert goes, then save it.
You can create more than one alert on the same report, up to what your plan allows.
Where the alert can go
| Channel |
What to know |
| Email | Choose the recipients and the address it is sent from. You can add the report to the email, inline or as an attachment. |
| In-app notification | Can be sent to the account administrator, organisation administrators, workspace administrators, and the people the report is shared with. |
| Slack or Microsoft Teams | Sends a message to a channel, so the right team sees it where they already work. |
| Webhook | Sends the alert to another system. |
| Zoho Flow or Zapier | Starts a workflow when the alert fires, for example creating a task or updating a record. |
Managing alerts
You can see and manage every alert in a workspace on one page, from the workspace settings. You can edit an alert, review when it has fired in its history, and run it straight away, instead of waiting for its next check.
Check your plan and version. The number of alerts, and some channels, can depend on your plan and on whether you use the cloud or an on-premise version of Zoho Analytics. Check what is available to you before you design a set of alerts around it.
Setting up alerts well: our advice
This section is our own advice, not Zoho's.
- Alert on what needs action. Too many alerts get ignored. Start with the handful of numbers where someone would genuinely do something, such as overdue invoices over a set value, or a sharp fall in daily orders.
- Match the check to the pace of the data. A daily sales figure rarely needs an hourly check.
- Send alerts to a team channel or a shared mailbox, not one person, so they do not stop when someone is away.
- Think before attaching reports. A report in an email can contain personal or commercial data. Check who receives it, and whether you are comfortable with it travelling by email. In the UK and Ireland, data protection law applies to what your reports contain. This is general guidance and not legal advice.
- Test the alert by setting a condition you know will be met, and check it reaches the right people.
Need help? As a Zoho Partner serving the UK and Ireland, we can build your Zoho Analytics reports and the alerts that watch them, and connect them to Slack, Teams, or Zoho Flow. Email
zoho@1cloudconsultants.com or
raise a support request with 1 Cloud Consultants.