Optimize evaluates data against rules you define. A rule identifies a significant condition under which a process or resource becomes problematic, requires attention, or is of interest. A rule can be configured to alert users or take programmatic action when the condition occurs. Rules can also be configured to send user alerts when the process or resource returns to compliance. You can define KPI rules, event rules and threshold rules.

When you define a rule, you identify the type of data to which to apply the rule (for example, Broker queue length). By default, Optimize then applies the rule to that type of data on all processes or applications (for example, all Brokers in your entire environment). However, you might want to apply the rule to that type of data for specific processes or applications only (for example, for certain Brokers only). In this case, you create a rule filter that identifies only the specific processes or applications. When you define the rule, you associate the rule filter with the rule.

During rule definition, you also identify the users to whom to send alerts when the rule is violated, or you can specify other actions to perform when a rule violation occurs (for example, send an SNMP alert to an SNMP manager or invoke a Web service).