Notifications

MCast™ produces a variety of notifications to help inform users of failures, potential failures, and unexpected behaviors. These notifications are intended to help you monitor your system and ensure that forecasts are running on the most up-to-date, reliable data. "Notifications" is a broad term encompassing all of the ways the product may communicate things to you.

Notification Settings

All accounts on MCast™ can select which alerts they want to be notified about by opening the NOTIFICATIONS tab and clicking the gear icon in the top right corner. From these notification settings, you can set your account's "Display Alerts" and "Email Notification" settings. These settings are user-specific, meaning that anything changed is only saved for the account currently logged in.

The "Display Alerts" are the alerts you receive within the website. By default, all of these alerts are enabled. If you disable an alert, you will stop receiving notifications for these alerts within the website. If you re-enable an alert, it will appear on the site again.

"Manage Email Notifications" allows you to configure when MCast™ will send you emails. See below for more about email notifications.

Note

Only the alerts that have been enabled will be included in the body of emails.

Email Notifications

All accounts can receive emails to notify them of updates, changes, or alerts in the product. By default, email notifications are disabled, but MCast™ can be configured to send automated emails after successful forecasts, failed forecasts, or when specific alerts are thrown. When you receive an email for an alert, the email body will contain the alert message(s) that triggered the email.

Options for Email Notifications

There are 3 types of email notifications you can receive:

Notification	Description
Successful	An email with the output files attached is sent each time a forecast runs successfully, whether or not there are any alerts.
Failed	An email is sent when a forecast is triggered but fails to complete. This email will contain the failure message of all alerts, regardless of individual alert settings.
Alerts	An email is sent each time an enabled alert occurs. The email will list each enabled alert, along with the alert's description. Disabled alert categories will not trigger an email and will not be included in emails. If the forecast is successful, all output files will be attached.

Under "Successful" emails, you will see 2 options after enabling: "Include All Output Files," or "Include Only Specific Files." If you select to include only specific files, then you will be given a menu where you can select/deselect the files you'd like to receive

Managing Service Email Notification Preferences

Admins have the option of setting up "Service Emails," which are emails that can receive automated MCast™ emails without being associated with a normal MCast™ account. Often these are email addresses shared across a whole department (for example, a generic Gas Control email). See Managing Service Emails on the "Admin Info" page for further instructions.

Alerts

Alerts are notifications produced when there are potential issues with MCast's™ ability to generate an accurate forecast. Alerts fall into two categories: System Alerts and Forecasts Alerts.

• System Alerts pertain to the entire application. System Alerts will display regardless of what forecast is currently being viewed.
• Forecast Alerts pertain to the generation or results of a specific forecast. Forecast Alerts will only be displayed when viewing the forecast that produced the alert.

How Alerts Appear on the Web

When a Forecast Alert is triggered, the bell icon next to NOTIFICATIONS will change color and show how many total alerts there are. A bell icon will also appear in the corresponding operating area(s) with the number of area-specific alerts. The example below shows a warning alert for the Metropolis area.

When alerts do not pertain to a specific operating area, a banner appears at the top of the screen with the alert's title. This is the behavior for all System Alerts and some Forecast Alerts.

When any alert is received, the bell next to NOTIFICATIONS in the header will change color, and the number next to NOTIFICATIONS will tell you how many total alerts there are. The example below shows a warning for the entire system.

The NOTIFICATIONS tab has three organizational tabs where alerts get sorted: ALL, SYSTEM, and FORECAST. Within the sorted lists, each alert contains the following information.

• A title indicating the type of alert
• A description containing the details of what triggered the alert. This description contains any area, date, and/or file this alert applies to and any other descriptions that can help diagnose the alert.
• An icon indicating if it is a SYSTEM or a FORECAST alert. A triangle with an exclamation point indicates a SYSTEM alert, while a calendar with a checkmark indicates a FORECAST alert.
• A timestamp displaying when the alert was generated (in your computer's timezone).
• A link to "View alert description", which takes you to a detailed description of the alert type in our help documentation. This description indicates how and why an alert of this kind gets triggered.
• A button(s) to clear the alert.

The information from the alert's title, description, and the detailed description found in the View Alert Description link should help you to understand and troubleshoot the alert as you see fit.

Alerts of the same type and severity for the same operating area are linked together in the alert list. This will be seen when you open the Notifications tab.

Example

If you have 2 "Out of range load data" alerts for the "Metropolis" area on the current forecast, you will see one of those alerts in the list with a button for "+1 Related Alerts". Clicking that button will display the other "Out of range load data" alert for "Metropolis".

Types of Alerts

Duplicate Forecast

A "Duplicate Forecast" alert is a System alert that occurs when a forecast gets triggered but there have been no new load or weather inputs entered into the system. Without updates to the input data, the resulting forecast will be exactly the same as the previous one.

If you get this alert and believe there should be updated data, please verify that the data was successfully uploaded. If you need help investigating further, please contact support at support@marquetteenergyanalytics.com.

Missing Data

A "Missing Data" alert is a System alert that occurs when MCast™ does not have access to the data needed to generate any part of a new forecast. The description of this alert should tell you exactly what required input data is missing.

If you receive this alert for weather data, please contact support at support@marquetteenergyanalytics.com and our team can diagnose if it was a failure on our side or if your weather provider needs to be contacted for further troubleshooting.

If you receive this alert for load data or a specific load file that is expected but not present, please check your internal processes to make sure the load data was uploaded correctly. If you need help investigating further, please contact support at support@marquetteenergyanalytics.com.

Out of Range Load Data

An "Out of Range Load Data" alert is a Forecast alert that occurs when the observed load value entered for an area appears to be too large or too small based on the weather that was experienced. MCast™ runs a simple validation model on all of the observed load data entered into MCast. Based on previously experienced loads, a reasonable range of load values is estimated given the actual temperature observed for the given day. Any entered load value outside of this range will produce an alert.

If you receive this alert, you should check to see that the entered load value in the alert's description matches what you believe your system experienced. If this load value is incorrect, you should correct the entry using one of the options described in the "Incorrect data got uploaded by mistake" section of the "All About Data" page. If the entered value appears to be correct, you can clear the alert.

This is a data validation alert, meaning that if it is cleared from one forecast it will remain cleared for all relevant forecasts. For more information about clearing alerts, hop to the "Managing Alerts" section of this page.

If you are regularly experiencing false positive out of range alerts, please contact support@marquetteenergyanalytics.com to adjust the parameters of this mechanism.

Out of Date Load Data

An "Out of Date Load Data" alert is a Forecast alert that can appear on an hourly forecasting instance. The alert occurs when the first hour of your forecast (a.k.a. "hour zero") is older than our threshold (threshold may vary based on your configuration). It is caused by not having enough load data to run for the expected first hour of the forecast.

If you receive this alert, please address the missing hourly load data and then attempt to generate a forecast again. If you need help investigating further, please contact support at support@marquetteenergyanalytics.com.

Unable to Retrieve File

An "Unable to Retrieve File" alert is a Forecast alert that occurs when the system is unable to access a file(s) that provides inputs to the model. Your system is configured to read in certain data files with each run of a new forecast. If an expected file is not there, MCast™ will fall back to attempt using data that has previously been entered into the system. This alert is then generated to indicate that the forecast may not be using the most recent data.

If you receive this alert for a weather file that is expected to be there, please contact support at support@marquetteenergyanalytics.com and our team can diagnose if it was a failure on our side or if your weather provider needs to be contacted for further troubleshooting.

If you receive this alert for a load file that is expected to be there, please check your internal processes to make sure the file is in the proper location. If you need help investigating further, please contact support at support@marquetteenergyanalytics.com.

File Parsing

An alert indicating "Unable to parse X" is a Forecast alert that occurs when there is unexpected data found in either a load or weather file. Your system is configured to read in certain files, and it is further configured to expect specific contents in those files (such as column names, data types, etc.). This alert should indicate exactly which file and what row of the file contains the problematic data.

If you receive this alert, please check the file contents and correct the data as necessary. If you are unable to check the file's contents or you believe that the alert is being thrown in error, please contact support at support@marquetteenergyanalytics.com.

Output File

An output file alert is a Forecast alert that occurs when there is an issue with either generating your output CSV forecast file(s) or uploading your output CSV forecast file(s) to the expected location. This alert indicates that your forecast completed correctly, and there was merely an issue with sending the data back to you via SFTP or email.

If you receive this alert, try downloading the CSV file directly from the MCast™ website. If you continue having issues with output files, please contact support at support@marquetteenergyanalytics.com.

Other

If you see an alert with the description "We're sorry about this. It seems GasDay has encountered an error. Please try running it again, and if this problem persists contact Marquette Energy Analytics.", please contact support at support@marquetteenergyanalytics.com. Our team will look at the log files to determine the exact cause of the error.

Managing Alerts

Alerts can be managed on either a per-user basis, or for the entire organization. Any account can manage alerts at the user level, but only admin accounts can manage alerts for the entire organization.

• Clearing an alert will remove it from the alert list and remove any colored alarms that appear on the page because of the alert.
• A cleared alert remains viewable, and will be nested under a button titled "View cleared alerts for this forecast"
• If a data quality alert appears on multiple forecasts, the cleared/restored status will carry over from forecast to forecast.

Example

A data validation alert (such as "Out of Range Load Data") appears for the data entered on January 7th. That alert will appear on successive forecasts until either the data point for January 7th is changed or the alert is cleared. If the alert is cleared, then the next forecast will not see a new alert for January 7th data; instead, that January 7th alert will show up in the "Cleared Alerts" section of the new forecast's alert list.

Note

Only alerts pertaining to data quality and data validation will have their cleared/restored status carried over. Alerts pertaining to missing files, missing data, and other potential issues do not have a cleared/restored status that can be carried over.

Clearing/Restoring Alerts Per User

Clearing or restoring an alert "For Me" will move the alert into or out of the "Cleared Alerts" list for the individual user. This status is linked to the User's login, so it will persist across different computers.

Note

An Admin cannot restore an alert that a User has cleared for themselves.

Clearing/Restoring Alerts For the Organization

When an Admin clears or restores an alert for the organization, the alert's status will be adjusted for all accounts with access to the application. Accounts with User and Read-Only credentials will be able to still see those alerts under a "Cleared Alerts" section, but they will not be able to restore the alert.

For admins looking for more information on this, see "Clearing Alerts for the Organization" on the Admin Info page.