Check configuration options provide a variety of approaches when matching incoming email messages and setting their status. This guide uses real-world examples to demonstrate check configurations using regex.

For Complex Match use in check configurations, see Complex Match Use in Checks. For more basic check creation tips, see Check Creation Guide and Best Practices.

The subject line format of an ARQ email includes a number with the word "error" or "errors" (when there is more than 1 error), e.g. "(10 errors)." In this example we want to set a success status for errors of 100 or fewer and a warning status for any number of errors above 100.

To match on digits from 0 to 99 without going any higher, we'll need to include the opening parentheses "(" and the space after the number, along with the word "error." This regex looks like: Because the "error" text appears at the far right of our string, both "error" and "errors" will match.

What this won't match is when there are exactly 100 errors. For that, we'll add another rule looking for that exact phrase "(100 errors)." That is not a regex entry, and merely looks for that number letter phrase.

We use the "Any" configuration instead of "All," allowing for either entry to set the successful state.

For the warning check, we require a minimum of 3 digits but allow for more. The regex will look like this:

By adding the plus symbol ("+") between the count and the space ("\s"), we open this to match much higher counts. We no longer need to match on single errors with the word "error," but the approach doesn't require any changes. Since 100 errors would match on this rule as well, we need to add an exclusion rule with the "Does Not Contain" option.

Because we need both rules to match, we use the "All" configuration.

In this example we want a warning when no new files are added to a backup location. This is indicated in IDrive emails when the number of files considered for backup is identical to the number of files already present in the backup.

We're looking for an unspecified number of digits followed by the word "file," which would also include "file(s)." That's shown in regex like this:

We then want to repeat the search for the same number and "file" combination later in the email. That's done with:

To make sure the correct repeated number/file combinations are being compared, we look for a character that doesn't appear between them, in this case a period, and use it as a breaking point. We do this by allowing anything else between our like number/file pair except a period, shown in regex as:

Any time our number/file pairs don't match, (the numbers are different), the warning status will be set.

For this example, we want to set warning and failure statuses based on the most recent activity in a Datto success report (csv). These reports include previous activity as well as the most recent activity. The csv version of the report records each previous entry status followed by a comma (,). The last entry, which is the most recent activity, is not followed by a comma. Using this lack of comma focuses our search. The regex to exclude (allow all characters but a comma) the comma looks like this:

Failures are reported with the term "Critical Failure" while our warning status will report on values of "No data" or "Success with exception."

For our failure status, we combine the term and lack of immediately-following comma like this:

Because we're looking at the csv attachment, we need to set the initial configuration option to "Attachments" and the second option to "Content Matches Regex."

For our warning status we'll use the terms "No data" and "exception" (not including the "Success with" portion of the text). These rules will also reference a lack of comma following the matching term, i.e.:

These rules also use the "Attachments" and "Content Matches Regex" options with the "Any" option, allowing for either rule to match.