Desktop App
A program that watches one or more Selvara instances, shows their alerts in one list and raises a notification when something happens. It holds its own connection, so it does not need a browser tab open to tell you anything — which is the reason it exists.
It is useful when you look after more than one instance. Each one keeps its own address, its own token and its own colour, and every alert in the list says which one it came from.
Setting it up
1. Issue a token
The app signs in with a token, not with your password. In the dashboard, open Profile → API tokens, create one and copy the value. It is shown once and never again; if you lose it, revoke it and make another.
The token acts as you. It sees the customers you see and may do what your role allows — acknowledging an alert needs operator, manager or administrator, so a viewer's token shows everything and changes nothing. Revoking it in the dashboard cuts that one program off and leaves your own sign-in alone. See API Tokens.
2. Add the instance
On first start, before any instance is set up, the app shows only a welcome screen with this form; the rest of the app appears once the first instance is saved. Later ones are added under Settings → Instances → Add instance. Give it:
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Label | What to call it. It appears in the list and in every notification, so use the customer's or the company's name rather than a hostname. |
| Address | The dashboard's address, for example https://monitoring.example.de. |
| Token | The value from step 1. |
| Colour | How its rows and notifications are marked. Each instance gets a different one. |
The app checks both the address and the token before it saves, so a typo says so immediately rather than looking like an instance with no alerts.
Repeat for the second instance. There is no limit.
What it does
Alerts across every instance, newest first. Filter by instance, status, customer or system. Opening one shows the metric, the threshold, the current value and when it fired, and lets you acknowledge or resolve it — the dashboard sees that within seconds, and the other way round.
Clicking a notification opens that alert. The window comes forward even if the app was sitting in the tray.
The timeline of one instance: reboots, failed services, failovers, everything the dashboard's event page shows.
About Selvara — the info button at the foot of the sidebar, or Settings → About Selvara — names the app's version, which is what a bug report should quote.
Catching up after the machine was asleep
This is the part that matters, and it is worth knowing what it promises.
On every connection the app reconciles before it believes anything on screen: it fetches the open alerts outright, then asks for everything that changed since it last looked, page by page, and only then applies what the live socket is sending. So a laptop closed on Friday and opened on Monday shows Monday's truth, not Friday's.
What happened while you were away is announced. What was announced already is not announced again — not after a reconnect, not after a restart, not after a crash. More than five at once collapse into one summary, so a bad night does not arrive as thirty notifications.
The app holds the dashboard's WebSocket at /api/live, signed in with its app
token, the same connection the dashboard pages use. A server that restarts, an
account whose role or customers change, a revoked token: the server closes the
socket and says why, and the app either reconnects at once — nothing to report
— or, for a token that no longer works, stops and asks for a new one. It needs
a dashboard of version 2.28.0 or later; older ones only offered the stream it
used to read.
Muting
Muting an instance stops its notifications and nothing else. It keeps synchronising, so its history stays complete and unmuting brings no backlog of things you already missed. Use it while one of your customers has a planned maintenance.
Where the token is kept
In the operating system's credential store — the Credential Manager on Windows, the Secret Service on Linux.
Some Linux systems have no such service. When that happens the app keeps the tokens in a file readable only by your account, and says so in Settings, with the path. A token quietly in a file while its owner believes it is in a keyring is worse than being told.
Tray, autostart and closing
Closing the window hides it in the tray rather than quitting, and minimising leaves it on the taskbar as usual; the tray menu shows, hides and quits. Settings → General has a switch for each of those two, so closing can be made to quit outright and minimising can be made to drop into the tray too, if you would rather have it that way. Autostart is off until you switch it on, and the switch only appears where the system can act on it.
When a token stops working
If a token is revoked or expires, that instance stops and says the token was revoked or expired rather than retrying quietly. Issue a new one and replace it in Settings. The other instances keep running.
Known limitations
- The program is not signed. Windows SmartScreen warns about it and an endpoint product may quarantine it. Signing needs a code-signing certificate.
- The tray icon is drawn for dark panels, which is the default on Windows 11 and most Linux desktops. On a light panel it is hard to see. Nothing can ask the system how bright its panel is.
- It shows alerts and events; it does not configure anything. Rules, maintenance windows, systems and users stay in the dashboard. Every alert has an "open in the dashboard" action for exactly that.