Getting Started with The Boring Toolbox #3: Learn about the various health monitoring insights and features you will find on…
Close
Close
Close
Close
In this note we will discuss the use case for notifications in Milestone XProtect and how to enable it securely.
As a Milestone XProtect admin you can’t be watching your system all the time so email notifications are critical for letting you know when something needs attention. Using rules in XProtect will allow you to triggers those alerts.
The rules engine in Milestone is very powerful and allows you string together different actions based on triggers. Triggers can be a physical switch, software analytic or system message and in most of these cases you, as an admin would like to be notified via email that the trigger was activated. There are hundreds of different variants but here are some simple examples:
Physical Switch: You have an input device like an Axis A9161 connected to an output of an intrusion panel and when the intrusion alarm is tripped you would like an email with an image from an associated camera.
Software Analytic: You have set up an intrusion zone in Agent-VI and when someone enters that zone during a certain time frame you want an email with the image of the person or vehicle entering the zone.
System Event: You want an email alert when the archive storage is no longer reachable and Milestone can not archive video.
Enabling email notifications in Milestone is pretty straight forward but unfortunately prior to version 2019R2 Express+, Pro+, Expert and Corporate versions of Milestone do not support SSL/TLS encryption which is important when connecting to secure email services like Gmail / Gsuite. The lack of support for SSL/TLS leaves your options for sending email notifications limited to open SMTP relays from gmail, which have limitations, or using your own in house email server.
As mentioned, Milestone versions 2019R1 you can not use SSL/TLS but with the use of an opensource 3rd party application called hmail you can!
Milestone has a great knowledge-base article on how to use hmail to enable notifications via Gmail in XProtect.
In 2019R2 and above Milestone listened and is now natively supporting SSL/TLS directly in the VMS. Here is how to use it:
Lastly you will need to set up a notification profile in management client to actually sent emails. Milestone has a great video on this here.
At Boring Lab we take security seriously as well as so we have built secure email notifications into Boring Toolbox as well. When using the Live Monitoring feature you have two methods of getting real time notifications on cameras enabled or disabled.
Hope this helps and if you want to try out Boring Toolbox’s Live Monitoring with secure notifications give our Free Trial a shot!
Your go-to XProtect eXPerts. We learn the technical stuff that will save you time and make it less boring.
Your go-to XProtect eXPerts. We learn the technical stuff that will save you time and make it less boring.
Getting Started with The Boring Toolbox #3: Learn about the various health monitoring insights and features you will find on…
Getting Started #2: Learn how to configure your parent and managed sites as well as connect Boring to Milestone XProtect…
Getting Started #1: This tutorial will teach you how to install The Boring Toolbox on your server and client.
Subscribe to get a monthly dose of security & surveillance industry news and insights, Milestone VMS time-saving tricks, tips for hacking your way out of boring work sent directly to your inbox!