Rule-Based Notifications

Rule-Based Notifications (RBN) proactively alert you when key metrics in Alloy cross thresholds you care about—so you can catch issues like spikes in denials, drops in approval quality, or unexpected volume changes without constantly monitoring dashboards.

You can create three types of rules:

• Count-based rules – trigger when a raw number of applications or evaluations meets a threshold
• Percent-based rules – trigger when a percentage of applications or evaluations meet a condition, with a required minimum volume
• Percent change rules – trigger when metrics deviate from your historical baseline behavior

This guide explains how to set up both, what each variable means, and best practices for using RBN effectively.

What You Can Monitor

You can create rules on:

• Journeys or Workflows
• Outcomes (e.g. Approved, Denied)
• Tags (Workflow-only)

Rules evaluate activity over a rolling time window and notify you when conditions are met.

How to Create a Rule-Based Notification

1. Navigate to Settings → Rule-Based Notifications in the Alloy Dashboard.
2. Click Create Rule-Based Notification.
3. Enter a Name (and optional description) for your rule.
4. Select whether the rule applies to a Workflow or Journey, then choose the specific policy.
5. Write your rule using the rule builder (details below).
6. Save the rule.

When the rule is hit, Alloy will:

• Send an email notification to defined users
• Show an in-dashboard notification
• Attach a unique RBN token to the alert for investigation

Rule Types Explained

Rule-Based Notifications support three rule types: count, percent, and percent change. Each is designed for a different monitoring need.

Count-Based Rules

Count rules trigger when the number of applications or evaluations matching a condition reaches a threshold within a given time window.

Example

Notify me if 20 applications are denied over the last 30 minutes.

Key variables:

• Metric: Applications or evaluations
• Condition: Outcome or tag (e.g. Denied, Manual Review)
• Count threshold: Minimum number required to trigger
• Time window: Rolling lookback period (e.g. last 15 minutes, 1 hour)

When to use count rules:

• Monitoring absolute spikes in volume
• Catching system issues (e.g. sudden surge in failures)
• High-volume, stable traffic patterns

Percent-Based Rules

Percent rules trigger when a percentage of applications or evaluations meet a condition and a minimum volume requirement is met.

Example

Notify me if 50% of applications are denied, with at least 30 applications, over the last 1 hour.

Key variables:

• Percentage threshold: The percent of applications/evaluations that must meet the condition
• Condition: Outcome or tag
• Minimum count: Required volume before the rule evaluates
• Time window: Rolling lookback period

Why minimum count matters:

The minimum count prevents false positives during low-volume periods (for example, 1 denial out of 1 application = 100%). The rule only evaluates once this minimum volume is reached.

When to use percent rules:

• Application volume varies by time of day or day of week
• You want signal consistency across peak and off-peak hours
• Monitoring quality metrics like denial or approval rate

Percent Change Rules

Percent change rules track deviations from your normal baseline behavior. Instead of comparing against a fixed threshold, these rules compare current performance to historical averages.

Example

Notify me if the percent change of hourly evaluations with the Fraud Risk tag is 50% or more above my baseline average.

How baseline is defined:

• Alloy calculates a baseline average using a 90-day rolling historical average for the selected metric
• Baselines are calculated at the same granularity you select (hourly, daily, or weekly)
• If you have less than 90 days of data, alerts may trigger more frequently until the baseline stabilizes

Key variables:

• Granularity: Hourly, daily, or weekly
• Metric: Applications or evaluations
• Condition: Outcome or tag
• Direction: Above or below baseline
• Percent change threshold: How far from baseline the metric must deviate

When to use percent change rules:

• Detecting anomalies relative to your normal behavior
• Monitoring partner or traffic shifts
• Catching gradual but meaningful changes that absolute thresholds may miss

Percent change rules can be applied to Workflows or Journeys and support tags and outcomes, just like count and percent rules.

Rule Evaluation & Reset Behavior

• Rules continuously evaluate activity within the defined time window.
• Once a rule is hit, a notification is sent.
• After triggering, the rule resets and begins monitoring again from zero.

Investigating a Triggered Rule

Every notification includes a unique Rule-Based Notification Token (e.g. RBN-abc123).

You can use this token to:

• Click directly from the email to the filtered Application Queue
• Filter the Application Queue by the RBN token
• See exactly which applications or evaluations contributed to the alert

What you’ll see:

• For greater-than (>) rules: all applications/evaluations that met the condition (e.g. all denials)
• For less-than (<) rules: all applications/evaluations that did not meet the condition

This makes it easy to identify root causes, partner-specific issues, or model behavior changes.

Best Practices

• Use count rules for absolute volume monitoring.
• Use percent rules for quality or rate-based monitoring.
• Always set a reasonable minimum count for percent rules.
• Start with broader thresholds and tighten them as you learn your normal patterns.
• Pair RBN alerts with saved Application Queue filters for faster triage.

Webhook Notifications

In addition to email and in-dashboard alerts, Rule-Based Notifications can also trigger webhooks.

This allows you to programmatically respond to alerts—for example, by paging an on-call system, creating an internal ticket, or triggering downstream automation.

How to enable webhooks for RBN:

1. Navigate to Settings → Webhooks and create or select an existing webhook endpoint.
2. When creating or editing a Rule-Based Notification, select the webhook you want triggered when the rule is hit.
3. Save the rule.

When the rule is triggered, Alloy will send a webhook event with details about the notification, including the unique RBN token for investigation.

For payload structure and event details, refer to the Alloy API documentation.

Notifications & Permissions

• Email notifications are sent from notifications@alloy.com
• Webhooks are delivered to the endpoint configured in Settings → Webhooks
• Only users with appropriate permissions can create or edit rules
• Notifications (email, dashboard, webhook) are sent to users or systems configured for the rule

Rule-Based Notifications help you stay ahead of issues without manual monitoring—giving you faster insight into changes that matter most.