How do *you* handle Xymon alerts when you are on vacation (holiday in British English)?

[SebA]

Hi all,
 
I'm interested in the different ways that people handle alerts when they are
on 
vacation (holiday in British English)...  I'm (still!) migrating from Big 
Brother BTF (still mostly use that for alerts, Xymon for the rest), and if I

went on vacation, I'd just put 1 line at the bottom of bb-alerts excluding
me 
from all alerts (as they get SMSed to my mobile) and someone else would get 
them (as I was never the only one to get them anyway).  But you can't do
that 
in Hobbit / Xymon (as I posted about last year).
 
So how do you do it, or what do you recommend for a network containing a 
variety of different machines, routers, O/Ses and services, where the
primary, 
secondary and tertiary responsibilities for each service may be different 
people depending on the service - in the case where one of those people goes
on 
vacation?
 
A few ways I can think of doing it using features I know already exist:

1.	have a distinct e-mail address for each person that receives alerts,

	that should only receive alerts and no other e-mails, and then 
	redirecting that address to another person when they go on holiday
and 
	then redirecting back to the original person when they come back
(has 
	the downsides of meaning that the other person gets all their
alerts, 
	even if they are not the most suitable person or getting those
alerts 
	anyway and so ending up with 2 copies of them - particularly
annoying 
	if they are SMSes like we use;  another downside is remembering to
put 
	it back when you get back from holiday) 
2.	going through all the services for which the person going on
vacation 
	receives alerts, and changing them so that they go to someone
else...  
	Has the downsides of the tedium involved in doing it and reverting

	it...  Might be easier if you have a special macro for each set of 
	changes, e.g. PersonA->PersonB, PersonA->PersonC and PersonA->Person
C 
	is 3 macros...  It is easy to change the macro when you get back (if

	you remember). 
3.	following on from #2, I suppose instead of defining macros for each 
	recipient (which is already one layer of abstraction better then the

	'default'), you could define a macro for each set of primary,
secondary 
	and tertiary recipients (although that could make quite a few 
	permutations in a large office).  Then you just have to change each
of 
	those macros when someone goes on holiday, and then again when they
get 
	back.
4.	A custom script, possibly with a database and putting all the
	intelligence in there (but that probably doesn't help others here,
	unless the script is publicly available).
5.	Er, and passing mobile (cell) phones back and forth - leaving your
work 
	mobile with someone else when you have the day off - but that only 
	works if you have a work mobile!

And then there are the ways using features that have not so far been built:

1.	being able to define vacations (I know public holidays has been
added 
	to a revent version) for recipients, when they start and when they 
	finish...  being able to set a VACATIONRECIPIENT who gets the alert
if 
	the first recipient is on vacation (they will need to not get it if 
	they are listed as the 2nd recipient too) 
2.	as above, but without the VACATIONRECIPIENT.  Instead if one of the 
	recipients is defined as on vacation, all the others automatically 
	shift up in terms of any DURATION> required before sending them an 
	alert 
3.	having the exclude feature that BB had, but, althought that was easy
to 
	do before going on holiday, it was a poor solution anyway in terms
of 
	handling of alerts 
4.	some other way...  I'm not going to spend too much time thinking of 
	them now when there may be a good solution already! ;)

Kind regards, 

SebA
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