Notification Orchestration, Triage and Archive · NOTA
The critical Azure alert reaches your team. The other 200 don't.
NOTA filters your Azure alerts by severity and duration and delivers the ones someone has to act on: into your ticketing system, to Microsoft Teams, by email or to your own API. Everything else still goes into the history and stays there without a time limit, long after Azure Monitor has deleted the alert after 30 days.
01Problem
Why important Azure alerts get lost
Important Azure alerts get lost when all alerts are treated the same. They land in the same mailbox, whether a test machine is briefly under load or the ERP system stops responding. After a few weeks, nobody reads every message. This pattern is called alert fatigue: people who constantly receive notifications that need no action respond more slowly to the critical ones too.
The same applies to costs. A budget alert for forecasted costs reports that spending is likely to exceed the budget before it happens (Microsoft Learn). That only helps if the alert reaches someone who can act on it.
In small IT teams, nobody's job is to sort alerts. Azure Monitor sends notifications by email, SMS or push and calls webhooks, Logic Apps or Azure Functions. There is no dedicated action type for ticketing systems such as TOPdesk, for Microsoft Teams or for Discord, so your team builds that connection itself (Microsoft Learn). Azure Monitor deletes fired alerts after 30 days.
ISO 27001 requires monitoring systems for anomalous behavior, assessing events and learning from incidents (Annex A 8.16, 5.25 and 5.27). For companies covered by NIS2, handling security incidents is one of the mandatory measures under Section 30 of the German BSI Act (BSIG). Both require that an alert reaches the person responsible and that you can trace later what was reported.
02How NOTA works
Azure alert management with filter rules and custom receivers
NOTA receives the alerts from your Azure subscriptions through Azure Lighthouse, checks them against filter rules and forwards the relevant ones to the receivers you have set in the rule. Every alert goes into the history, even if it triggers no notification.
Alerts from Azure
NOTA processes budget alerts, including those for forecasted costs, metric alerts such as CPU and memory of containers and web services, Resource Health and Service Health alerts, availability alerts and activity log alerts, among others. NOTA reads alerts from Azure Monitor in the complete common alert schema.
Filter rules
A filter rule checks the severity of an alert and how long it has lasted. A short load spike then triggers no notification, while sustained overload does. Thresholds such as this minimum duration can be adjusted, and so can budget alerts. You also choose in the filter rule which receivers an alert reaches, for example critical alerts to TOPdesk and Teams and budget alerts by email to IT management. A filter rule applies to the whole tenant, which means all connected subscriptions.
Receivers
NOTA sends alerts to email distribution lists, Microsoft Teams, Discord, custom APIs and to any ticketing system that has an API, for example TOPdesk, Jira Service Management, ServiceNow, OTRS, Zammad or Freshservice. A critical alert arrives where your team already works: in the helpdesk's ticketing system or in the admins' Teams channel.
History
NOTA stores every incoming alert with its arrival time, source tenant and the raw data from Azure, even if it triggered no notification. After a failure, you can trace which alerts came in beforehand, including the filtered ones. The history has no technical time limit and is kept in a SQL database in the tenant NOTA runs in. You decide what is kept and for how long.
How an alert runs
- Azure fires an alert, and NOTA receives it through Azure Lighthouse.
- NOTA stores the alert in the history and checks it against the filter rules.
- If the alert matches a filter rule, it goes to the receivers set in that rule.
03Result
What changes for IT management and administration
Critical Azure alerts reach the people responsible in the tool they already use, and after a failure all alerts are in one place.
| Without NOTA | With NOTA | |
|---|---|---|
| Critical alert | one message among many in the same mailbox | in the ticketing system or the Teams channel of the people responsible |
| Short load spike | notification as soon as the alert rule fires | no notification until the minimum duration is reached |
| Alert that needs no action | the same notification as a critical one | no notification, but stored in the history |
| TOPdesk, Teams, Discord | own connection via webhook, Logic App or Azure Function | receivers in NOTA |
| Scope of a rule | one subscription per alert processing rule | the whole tenant |
| Analysis after a failure | alerts from the last 30 days in the Azure portal, plus mailboxes and channels | history of all incoming alerts without a time limit, with raw data |
Your team doesn't have to read every message to find the important ones. That helps most in teams where administration, helpdesk and security are in few hands.
Alerts and tickets in the operation of ASTRA, our Azure managed service, already run through NOTA. NOTA is included in ASTRA.
NOTA runs as a service in our Azure tenant, in the Azure region West Europe in the Netherlands. You connect your subscriptions through Azure Lighthouse, which means the alerts leave your tenant. If they must not, we set up NOTA in your own tenant and agree on the price with you.
04Fit
Who NOTA is for
NOTA fits if
- Azure alerts currently land in a mailbox or distribution list that hardly anyone reads,
- short load spikes regularly trigger notifications,
- budget alerts should reach IT management and technical alerts should reach administration,
- your helpdesk works with a ticketing system such as TOPdesk, Jira Service Management or ServiceNow and critical alerts should arrive there,
- you want to analyze failures afterwards based on all incoming alerts,
- you need to show for ISO 27001, TISAX or NIS2 how alerts are filtered and delivered.
05Price
What NOTA costs
NOTA starts at EUR 99 per month. The price depends on the number of connected subscriptions per tenant, not on the number of users.
| Connected subscriptions | Price per month |
|---|---|
| up to 3 | EUR 99 |
| up to 10 | EUR 299 |
| up to 25 | EUR 599 |
| unlimited | EUR 999 |
Helpdesk, administration and IT management receive their alerts without licensing each person individually. There is no setup fee, and connecting through Azure Lighthouse is included.
According to Microsoft, data ingestion and retention in Log Analytics are usually the biggest cost item in Azure monitoring (Microsoft Learn). NOTA adds a fixed monthly price, no matter how many alerts come in.
All prices exclude VAT. We offer setup in your own tenant on request.
06FAQ
Frequently asked questions about NOTA
What is NOTA?
NOTA (Notification Orchestration, Triage and Archive) is a service by DEVDEER GmbH for alert management in Microsoft Azure. Filter rules check the severity and duration of an alert, among other things, and forward only the relevant ones to the receivers you choose: ticketing systems such as TOPdesk, email distribution lists, Microsoft Teams, Discord or custom APIs. Every incoming alert stays accessible in the history, even without a notification and without a time limit.
What does NOTA cost?
From EUR 99 per month for up to three connected subscriptions, EUR 299 for up to ten, EUR 599 for up to 25 and EUR 999 without a limit, each excluding VAT. There is no per-user pricing and no setup fee. We offer setup in your own tenant on request.
What is alert fatigue?
Alert fatigue means that people respond to alarms more slowly or not at all because they receive too many of them. In IT, it happens when monitoring tools report every anomaly through the same channel. NOTA addresses this: filter rules only forward the Azure alerts that are defined as relevant.
How do I send Azure alerts to Microsoft Teams or TOPdesk?
Azure Monitor has no dedicated action type for either. Without an additional product, you set up a webhook, a Logic App or an Azure Function in an action group that passes the alert on, and you maintain that connection yourself. Azure Monitor offers its own ITSM integration only for ServiceNow and BMC (Microsoft Learn). NOTA delivers alerts to Microsoft Teams and to any ticketing system with an API, including TOPdesk.
Azure Monitor has alert processing rules. Why do we need NOTA?
Alert processing rules suppress notifications, for example during maintenance windows, or add action groups to fired alerts. They apply within the subscription where they are created (Microsoft Learn). A filter rule in NOTA applies to the whole tenant instead. NOTA also filters by how long an alert lasts, delivers to ticketing systems, Teams and Discord, and stores every alert in the history. Azure Monitor deletes fired alerts after 30 days, while they stay in NOTA's history without a time limit.
Which alerts does NOTA process?
Budget alerts, including those for forecasted costs, metric alerts such as CPU and memory of containers and web services, Resource Health and Service Health alerts, availability alerts and activity log alerts, among others. NOTA processes alerts from Azure Monitor in the complete common alert schema, and the raw data is kept in the history.
Which receivers does NOTA support?
Email distribution lists, Microsoft Teams, Discord, custom APIs and any ticketing system that has an API, for example TOPdesk, Jira Service Management, ServiceNow, OTRS, Zammad or Freshservice. You choose in the filter rule which receivers an alert reaches.
How do alerts reach NOTA?
Through Azure Lighthouse. With it, you delegate subscriptions or resource groups to our tenant. You can see the delegation in the Azure portal, actions our team takes on delegated resources appear in your activity log, and you can remove the delegation at any time (Microsoft Learn).
What is in the history, and how long does it stay there?
Every incoming alert, even if it triggered no notification. For each alert, NOTA stores the arrival time, the source tenant and the raw data from Azure. The history has no technical time limit and is kept in a SQL database in the tenant NOTA runs in. You decide what is kept and for how long.
Where does NOTA run?
As a service in our Azure tenant, in the Azure region West Europe in the Netherlands. This means the alerts leave your tenant. If they must not, we set up NOTA in your own tenant and agree on the price with you. NOTA is included in ASTRA.
Does NOTA replace an on-call rotation?
No. NOTA filters Azure alerts and delivers them to the right receivers. Who responds outside working hours is part of your operating model.
Is NOTA a Microsoft product?
No. NOTA is a product of DEVDEER GmbH. DEVDEER is a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider.
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