How to view and edit the Alerts

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Overview
• Navigating to the Alerts tab
• Alert display and filters
• Result threshold slider
• Result threshold control
• Table Row Hover functionality
• Manage exceptions by Alerts

Overview

Exception-based forecast management allows you to focus on and manage key issues of concern with regard to stock, supply, or product management. QU has the ability to configure alerts to suit the planners' focus on demand issues - with the ability to adjust the forecast for expedient mitigation.

Alerts allow you to monitor and manage exceptional interval-on-interval (week-on-week, Month-on-month etc) variance in the demand forecast. In this article, you will learn how to view, edit, and resolve alerts.

Alerts can be set at any level in the hierarchy.

Alerts are reported at whatever hierarchical level they have been set at, as well as SKU level. That is to say If an alert rule has been set at Level 3, any alerts triggered by that rule will be reported at Level 3 and SKU level only.

Alert types

There are Four attributes that can constitute an Alert Rule. These can warn of

• Over Forecasting 
• Under Forecasting 

over a period of time described as either

• Fixed Date 
• Fixed Horizon.

Over and Under Forecasting Alerts

Over and Under Forecasting alerts are designed to warn of possible lost sales opportunities as well as possible excess stock and storage problems.

Fixed Date Alert

Fixed Date Alert is designed to monitor a product for a specific period of time with a start and an end date.

Shown below:

• The Alert is set to monitor from Calendar week 16 to calendar week 19 (inclusive), four one-week intervals.
• The sum of the monitored intervals is compared to the sum of the same number of intervals one week previous.
• The alert is ended when the first comparison interval becomes a historic date.

Fixed Horizon Alert

Fixed Horizon Alert is designed to monitor a product for a set, constant interval of time from the current date.

Shown below:

• This Alert is set to monitor from Week 8 to Week 9 (inclusive) horizon from whatever the current date is.
• The sum of weeks 8 & 9 is compared to the sum of weeks 7 & 8 (being the previous fortnight period) on an ongoing basis.

Navigating to the Alerts tab
The Alerts tab is the 2nd from left in the Navigation bar.

Alert type selector

Shows all types of Alerts in the Alert section. 

The number after the Alert name is the Alert count. The count will still report the total number of alerts before any variance threshold is set on the table.

Result threshold slider

The threshold slider is designed to quickly refine the list of alerts to show the products most heavily impacted by the numbers of units under or over forecast. 

i.e. an alert for a range of products, in five intervals* time, that is triggered by a 20% variance of predicted sales compared to the previous interval, might mean that a category of products could be 200+ units short of expected sales, meaning stores would be unable to cope with the expected demand of those products, resulting in lost sales opportunities.

*Intervals could be days, weeks, months, quarters etc.

This alert would be more critical to solve than an alert that only predicted an affected 30 products.

Increasing the Threshold variance slider to 50% will hide all alerts which report less than a 50% variance in the forecast for any specified interval, allowing the user to concentrate on the most pressing issues first. All alerts can be shown at any stage by sliding the control back to the Show All position.

The selection of products in the filter will not be changed when the Alerts Threshold slider has been used.

View Current or All (including Dismissed) Alerts

The default view on the Alerts table is to show Current Alerts, That is all Alerts that need attention. The All Alerts view will display Current Alerts as well as Alerts that have been dealt with and dismissed.

Dismissed Alerts are shown on the table as dark grey text on a grey background.

Table Pagination

The alerts table uses pagination to cater for Alert numbers larger than 50. To See Alerts 51 to 100 use the Pagination control or the Variance slider as described previously.

Table Row Hover functionality

On Hover of a table row, Alerts functionality is made available as shown below:

1. Select this row. Selected rows can be collectively assigned a reason and/or dismissed.

2. Dismiss Alert. When remedial measures have been performed on alerted products, those alerts can be dismissed. A dismissed alert will be removed from the Alerts table when in View Current Alerts mode. 

3. Product Table view. An Alert has reported that a product or group of products has been Under or Over forecast in a specified time. 

In order to remediate problems with this product/group of products the demand should be increased/decreased to mitigate issues. This is done in the Product Table. 

Clicking on the Product Table View button will take the user to the product table, pre-populated with the alerted Product in the specified timeframe.

4. Reason. When a problem has been dealt with, an alert can be dismissed, however, a reason should be given for the dismissal. The reason combo box contains a list of preset reasons why an alert arose or how it was solved. This should be done before the Alert has been dismissed. The reason will be visible on the unselected row when set.

Multiple Table Row functionality

Click on any selected rows' function icons to effect change on all selected items.