March 2017 Summaries

Onboarding remote employees, especially those in significantly different time zones, can present unique challenges, but with strategic planning and flexibility, it's manageable, as demonstrated by the author's experience at Rollbar. By assigning a specific point of contact for new hires and ensuring some overlap in working hours, communication becomes more efficient, allowing the remote employee to feel comfortable and supported. Implementing a daily questions document, which is checked by team members when they come online, helps address the issue of time zone differences by providing a centralized place for inquiries and answers. Regular check-ins with management, such as weekly meetings with the CTO, further enhance the onboarding process by ensuring the remote employee feels connected and valued within the company. Such strategies not only expedite the onboarding process but also enable companies to benefit from having a globally distributed workforce capable of offering support and expertise around the clock.

Losant and Rollbar collaborated to create an innovative office error alarm system that integrates Rollbar's error alert capabilities with Losant's IoT platform, using a combination of hardware and software components. The system employs an Intel Edison to control devices like a WeMo Insight Switch and a rotating police party light, which serve as visual indicators of application errors detected by Rollbar. By setting up a workflow in Losant, webhooks from Rollbar trigger device commands that turn the alarm light on for 20 seconds, alerting office staff to issues. The tutorial outlines the configuration process for connecting and controlling the devices, including setting up network access, configuring Losant device credentials, and creating webhooks and workflows to facilitate communication between Rollbar and Losant. This project exemplifies how IoT and error monitoring can be harnessed to enhance awareness and accountability in a smart office environment, offering opportunities for further expansion such as adding sound alarms or multiple lights for different triggers.

Integrating VictorOps with Rollbar streamlines error management by converting Rollbar items into alerts within VictorOps, allowing teams to receive notifications and resolve incidents more swiftly. This integration requires configuration per project in Rollbar, involving copying API and routing keys from VictorOps into Rollbar's notification settings. Once set up, alerts in VictorOps are automatically resolved when issues are addressed in Rollbar, and users can customize alert rules to fit their needs. This collaboration aims to minimize downtime and enhance monitoring efficiency, with additional support for other integrations like PagerDuty. Users can explore integration documentation and a full list of compatible tools, with a 14-day free trial available for Rollbar to help manage production errors effectively.