Actian Data Observability : Monitoring Data : Alert Policies
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Alert Policies
Actian Data Observability provides a set of out-of-the-box policies that are automatically created when a new dataset is added. Users also have the flexibility to create their own custom policies
Out-of-box Policies
Below is the list of pre-defined policies
Policy
What is Monitored?
Completeness Drifts
Changes in percentage of empty records
DQ Rules Violation
Detection for any rule violation
Data Difference
Addition/Removal of different records across tables.
Note: Data diff must be enabled first
Data Drifts
Changes in various value formats (length, special characters, number of tokens, etc.)
Data Process Faillures
Detection of any scan failure
Freshness Drifts
Table and record level freshness drifts
Note: For this policy to take effect, timestamp attribute must be identified
Numeric Value Drifts
Changes in averages of numeric values for an attribute
PII Exposure
Presence of PII data in your dataset (email, IP, etc).
Note: This policy is disabled by default
Record Count Correlation Drifts
Changes in data volume across correlated tables with defined lineage.
Note: For this policy to take effect, you need to define the tables lineage
Record Count Drifts
Changes in the number of scanned rows
Record Id Uniqueness Drifts
Changes in data uniqueness of record Id
Note: For this policy to take effect, you need to enable table Id
Schema Drifts
Changes in schema; example: column added or removed
Top Values Drifts
This feature monitors the changes for the top 10 values. An alert is generated if new values are added or removed
Uniqueness Correlation Drifts
Changes in data uniqueness across tables with defined lineage
Note: For this policy to take effect, you need to define the tables lineage
Uniqueness Drifts
Changes in data uniqueness across attributes
Value Distribution Drifts
Changes in the distribution of the top 20 most frequent categorical values
Correctness Drifts
Changes in the percentage of correct records based on defined expectations
Modifying/Reviewing Existing Policies
You can view, modify, or disable existing policies anytime by navigating to the “Alerting Policies” page and selecting the relevant dataset. The policies are displayed in a table with the following properties:
  • Name: Policy name (User-defined policies are marked in yellow; Actian Data Observability out-of-the-box policies are marked in green)
  • Metric: The monitored metric
  • Tags: A list of text tags. These tags are user defined, and can be used for tracking purposes
  • Impact: User defined property for impact reporting. Value can be LOW, MED or HIGH
  • Status: Indicates whether the policy is enabled or disabled
  • Create ticket automatically: Optional to auto create ticket when incidents are created
    • If checked, user will need to specify a ticket template
    • Ticketing integration must be setup for this feature to be visible (ex: Jira)
  • Actions:
    • Edit: Modify policy properties or scope.
    • Notifications: Toggle notifications on or off
    • Delete: Remove the policy (Available only for custom policies)
User Defined Policy
Users can create custom policies to monitor any of the calculated metrics. These metrics are tracked by specifying a threshold that triggers an alert when violated. The supported thresholds include:
Supported Threshold
  • Actian Data Observability-ML
    Actian Data Observability’s built-in anomaly detection using machine learning
  • Relative Drift
    Percentage change in data compared to previous scans or the average of scans
  • Acceptable Range
    Check if a metric falls within a specified range
Steps to Create a Custom Policy
  1. Navigate to “Alerting Policies” page & chose the “Policies” Tab
  2. Click the "New Policy" tab to start defining your policy.
  3. A side menu will appear similar to this image
  4. Select desired “Tracked Metric” from the list of
    • User-defined metrics, or
    • Health metric calculated by Actian Data Observability
  5. Based on Metric selection, the user may need to select tracked attributes (ex: correctness, the user will need to specify associated attributes)
  6. Select Detection Type. In case of Relative and Range detections, the user can specify how to handle the metric when not available (replace by zero or average).]
  7. Add Notification Channels by clicking "Notifications" button
    1. Click +Add Channel
    2. Select a value from the list of defined channels.
    3. Repeat above for all desired channels
  8. Click Save.
Last modified date: 11/21/2025