CAP Timing Controls

The CAP timing controls, Poll Interval, Resend Interval, and Dispatch Delay, adjust the timing of events within OneAlert.

In most scenarios, the default values will work fine for your environment. However, if after using your services for a while you find that you do not need to poll the service as often or you want to wait longer before resending active alerts, you can edit your CAP-related services to adjust these times.

These values apply to AMBER Alerts, IPAWS Alerts, National Weather Service Alerts, and Monitor General CAP Feeds

  • Poll Interval Seconds – Defines how often OneAlert checks for new alerts.
  • Resend Interval Seconds – Defines how often OneAlert will resend active alerts. Entering a value of "0" will disable the resending of alerts.

  • Dispatch Delay Seconds – Delays activation of active alerts by the specified time.

    Many devices (such as phones and speakers) cannot receive more than one alert at a time. If several NWS alerts are received at once, alerts need to be spaced apart so your endpoints can receive all of them. Here are some scenarios where you will likely need a longer delay period than the 15-second default value:

    • You have more than one service triggering a notification, and therefore have the potential of several alerts triggering the notification at the same time.
    • You have multiple different services triggering a notification, and therefore have the potential of several alerts triggering the notification at the same time.
    • The service is monitoring a large geographic area that could get several alerts at the same time.
    • The notification that is triggered includes a stored audio file that plays before the alert is displayed. In this scenario, you will want to make sure the delay is long enough to play the audio and display the text. The Media page provides the length of all stored audio files in the Details column.
    • The notification is using text to speech. You want to make sure you've given enough time for the system to convert the incoming IPAWS alert to speech and then playing it.