Navigating the Compliance Alerts Dashboard

Overview

Compliance Alerts helps you stay informed when critical configuration settings are modified across your Meraki network. By defining compliance rules, you can monitor specific settings, target entities, and administrator activity — and receive alerts whenever a change matches your criteria.

The Compliance Alerts dashboard is your central hub for managing rules and reviewing alerts. From here, you can create new rules, monitor their status, and investigate triggered alerts to understand what changed, where, and by whom.

This guide walks you through the dashboard layout, how to navigate between the Rules and Alerts tabs, and how to use the available tools to stay on top of configuration changes.

Before You Begin

Before using Compliance Alerts, make sure you have:

• An active Boundless workspace with a valid subscription
• At least one organization connected to your workspace
• Automatic Change Detection enabled for the organization you want to monitor
• Owner or User role in your workspace

Important: Compliance Alerts relies on Automatic Change Detection to identify configuration changes. If Change Detection is not enabled, you will not be able to use this feature in your organization.

Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Access Compliance Alerts

1. Navigate to the Safeguard main menu
2. Click on an Organization to access the Entity page
3. Click Compliance Alerts button

What you’ll see: The Compliance Alerts dashboard opens with two tabs at the top: Rules and Alerts. The Rules tab is selected by default.

Step 2: Explore the Rules Tab

The Rules tab displays a table of all compliance rules created for the currently selected organization.

Each row in the table includes the following information:

Step 3: Use the Actions Menu (Rule Tab)

Each rule in the Rules tab has an Actions menu (⋮) that gives you quick access to rule operations.

1. Find the rule you want to manage
2. Click the ⋮ icon in the Actions column

What you’ll see: A dropdown menu with the following options (in order):

1. View Rule — Open the rule’s information page
2. Pause or Activate — Toggle the rule’s monitoring status (only one option appears, depending on the current status).
3. Duplicate — Create a copy of the rule with pre-populated settings.
4. Delete — Permanently remove the rule and its associated alerts.

Important: Once you create a rule, you won't be able to make any edits to it. To change any of the rule settings, duplicate the rule and modify the pre-populated settings. You can then choose to keep, pause or delete the original rule.

Step 4: Explore the Alerts Tab

Click the Alerts tab to switch from the Rules view

What you’ll see: A list of all alerts triggered by your active compliance rules, displayed in reverse chronological order (newest first).Each alert entry includes:

1. Click on any alert row to expand it and view full details
2. Use the filters at the top of the tab to narrow results by Rule
3. Click Clear to reset all filters

Step 5: Use the Actions Menu (Alert Tab)

Each alert in the Alert tab does also have an Actions menu (⋮) that gives you quick access to alert operations.

1. Find the alert you want to manage
2. Click the ⋮ icon in the Actions column

What you’ll see: A dropdown menu with the following options (in order):

1. View Rule — Open the rule’s information page
2. Mark as Resolved — Set the alert’s state to “Resolved” and hides it from the Active panel
3. Unmarked as Resolved — Set the alert’s state back to “Unresolved” and displays it on the Active panel

Important: The Alert panel displays only Active alerts. Click on View all to display both Active and Resolved alerts.

Best Practices

For organizing your rules:

• Use descriptive rule names that indicate what the rule monitors (e.g., “HQ Security Settings” rather than “Rule 1”)
• Add descriptions to clarify the rule’s scope, especially when multiple rules target similar settings
• Review your rules periodically and pause or delete rules that are no longer relevant

For reviewing alerts:

• Check the Alerts tab regularly to identify unexpected configuration changes
• Investigate alerts with multiple co-authors carefully, as Safeguard identifies all administrators who made changes during the snapshot interval

Common Questions

Q: Why don’t I see any alerts even though I have active rules?
A: Alerts are only triggered when a configuration change matches your rule criteria during a snapshot comparison. If no matching changes have occurred since the rule was created, no alerts will appear. Confirm that Automatic Change Detection is running for your organization.

Q: Can I export my alerts?
A: Alert export is not currently available. You can review all alert details directly from the Alerts tab.

Q: What does “Co-author” mean in an alert?
A: Safeguard cannot pinpoint the exact administrator who changed a specific setting. Instead, it identifies all administrators who made changes to the entity during the snapshot interval. These are listed as co-authors.

Q: What happens to alerts if I pause a rule?
A: Existing alerts remain visible in the Alerts tab. However, no new alerts will be triggered for that rule while it is paused.

Next Steps

Now that you’re familiar with the Compliance Alerts dashboard, you might want to:

• Create your first compliance rule
  Define what settings, targets, and administrators to monitor.
  See Creating a Compliance Rule.
• View a rule’s full configuration
  Inspect the settings, targets, and source filters of any existing rule. See Viewing Rule Information.
• Pause or activate a rule
  Temporarily disable monitoring without deleting your configuration.
  See Pausing and Activating Compliance Rules.