Guided setup and Ara, Pingara's assistant

Pingara gives you two ways to get going. Guided setup is a short form that adds a monitor, a status page or an alert setup, with no AI involved. Ara is Pingara's AI assistant: ask it how Pingara works, what your monitors and incidents are doing, or have it talk you through adding a monitor, a status page or an alert setup. For a monitor, Pingara checks that it can reach your address first, suggests sensible settings, and switches the monitor on when you say so. For a status page, you choose a name, an address, the monitors it shows and who can see it, then create it. For alerts, you choose a policy, the alert types, the channels and the monitors it covers, then create the setup. Each takes a few minutes.

Good to know: neither Guided setup nor Ara creates anything on its own. You press the button that switches the monitor on, the button that creates the status page, or the button that creates the alert setup.

Try this: open /monitors/new?guided=1 in your Pingara app, type your website address, and press Check it. Or open /status-pages/new to set up a status page, or /settings/alerts/new to set up alerts. Or, if Ara is on for you, press Ask Ara and type "What is Apdex?" or "Which of my monitors need attention?".

Two ways to use it

Ara is being switched on gradually, so you might not see it yet. Guided setup works either way, and you never need Ara to add a monitor.

Where to find them

• The setup checklist. The dashboard opens with a card called "Finish setting up Pingara" until you finish its three steps. See The setup checklist.
• The Guided setup button. It sits next to Add Monitor on the Monitors page, and in the empty monitors table on the dashboard.
• The status page Guided setup button. It sits beside Create Status Page on the Status Pages page, and an empty Status Pages page links to it as Walk me through it with guided setup. Only owners, admins and editors see it.
• The alerts Guided setup button. It sits in the header of Settings → Alert Policies, beside New Policy. Only owners, admins and editors see it, and it is still there when your organization has used all the alert policies its plan includes, where it updates a policy you already have.
• The Ask Ara button. When Ara is on for you, it floats in the bottom-right corner of every signed-in page.

If you already know what you want, use I know what I'm doing, show me the full form at the top of Guided setup. The full form is the same one behind Add Monitor, and nothing is hidden from you there.

The setup checklist

The setup checklist walks a new organization through three steps: add your first monitor, create a status page, and send a test alert. It shows a count of finished steps ("1 of 3 done") and a button for the next step you can do.

• Add your first monitor. Opens Guided setup for a monitor, or the full form.
• Create a status page. Opens Guided setup for a status page. If your plan's status pages are all in use, the step says so instead of offering the form.
• Send a test alert. Needs a monitor first. See Send a test alert.

Each step is marked done once, the first time it happens. Deleting the monitor or the status page later does not un-tick it. A step your role cannot do, such as creating a status page as a viewer, says that someone with a different role can do it.

Where it shows

• The dashboard. The card sits at the top. Hide setup steps (the X) hides it for you only, on every device, and does not hide it for anyone else. It disappears by itself once all three steps are done. If your organization existed before the checklist and already has a monitor, the dashboard does not show it.
• The last step of Guided setup. After you create a monitor or a status page, What next? lists the steps still to do. The last step of the alert setup does not show it. The test alert card appears on the last step of the monitor setup, for the monitor you just created, and of the alert setup, for the monitors it covers. The status page setup has no test alert card. Hiding the dashboard card does not hide these.
• Ara. When you open Ara, its first message points at your next step: a status page, or checking who hears about an outage. If checking alerts is next but your organization has no monitors, Ara says a monitor comes first, because a test alert runs on a real monitor. Ara reads only which step is next. It does not create anything, and the test alert is a button on your dashboard or a monitor's page, never in Ara's window.

Send a test alert

The test alert opens a test incident on one of your monitors and sends its alert through your real alert settings, to every person and channel a real outage on that monitor would reach. That includes the policies attached to the monitor, or the email to your organization's members when it has none, and any channel set up with Guided setup, which gets every alert its policy sends whatever each member chose in their own notification settings.

1. Press Send test alert on the dashboard checklist or on the last step of the monitor or alert setup. The dashboard card tests your newest monitor. The alert setup's last step starts with the first monitor it covers and lets you pick another when it covers several. (The Send test alert button on a monitor's page sends the same test, but it does not ask you to confirm it. The cards above do.)
2. The card shows how many alerts were sent, how many are still sending and how many failed, and whether the email to your own account address went out. It never lists who else received one.
3. When at least one alert was sent, it asks "Did an alert reach you?". Press I got it if it did.

The checklist ticks the alerts step only when someone in your organization presses I got it. "Sent" means the email service or app accepted the alert. It can still land in a spam folder or a muted channel, so Pingara asks you rather than assuming.

Good to know:

• The test incident resolves itself after about a minute, sends a recovery alert, and does not change your uptime, your reports or your public status page.
• If Monitor Down is off for every alert policy covering the monitor, the card warns that the test will not reach anyone, because the alert is held back. Turn it on in Settings → Alert Policies.
• You can send up to 3 tests per monitor and 5 per person in 10 minutes.
• You need a verified email address to send a test, as for any monitor action.
• Any member can send a test and press I got it, viewers included.

Guided setup for a monitor

Guided setup for a monitor has four steps and a progress line at the top.

1. Address. Type the website or server address you want to watch, like mybakery.co.uk. You can leave out https://. Pingara works out whether it is a website or a server, and you can change that with Change. Website (HTTPS) checks open the page like a visitor's browser. Server ping checks that a machine answers. Other types, such as TCP, DNS and WebSocket, are in the full form.
2. Reachability. Pingara sends one test check to your address and shows the result in plain English. See Why can't Pingara reach my address? if it fails. You can switch the monitor on even when the test fails.
3. Details. Give the monitor a name (Pingara suggests one) and choose how often to check. Free plans check every 5 minutes or slower. Pro plans can go down to 30 seconds.
4. Switch on. Review the summary and press Switch it on. Pingara then watches for the first real check and tells you how it went.

Pressing Switch it on twice does not create two monitors. Each page load carries a one-time key, so a double click, a retry after a flaky connection or a second tab returns the monitor that already exists.

Alerts

Guided setup for a monitor does not set up alert channels. By default, Pingara emails the members of your organization when a monitor goes down or recovers, following their own notification settings, and that starts with your own account email. To add Slack, Teams, Discord, PagerDuty or a webhook, use Guided setup for alerts or go to Settings → Alert Policies after you create the monitor. See Setting Up Alerts.

Email verification

You need a verified email address to switch a monitor on. If you have not verified yours, the form tells you to do that first. We sent a link when you signed up.

Guided setup for a status page

Open Guided setup on the Status Pages page, or go to /status-pages/new. It has five steps and a progress line, and it uses no AI. Owners, admins and editors can use it, and you need a verified email address, as for any status page. Nothing is published until you press Create status page.

1. Name. What the page is called. It shows at the top of the page, and most teams use their company or product name. A name can be up to 100 characters and cannot contain hidden or formatting characters.
2. Address. The part of the web address that is yours, for example acme in https://status.pingara.io/acme. Pingara suggests one from the name. See Address rules.
3. Monitors. Choose which monitors the page shows. See Choose the monitors. You can skip this and add monitors later.
4. Visibility. Public means anyone with the address can view the page, and visitors can subscribe to updates. Private means only signed-in members of your organization can view it. The form starts on Public.
5. Check and create. The summary shows the name, address, visibility and every monitor you chose by name. Press Create status page to create it.

The form sets only the name, the address, the visibility and the monitors. Everything else starts with the same defaults as the Create Status Page dialog. The header and footer text, theme color and logo are empty, and you change them afterward from Edit status page. See Creating Status Pages.

Pressing Create status page twice does not create two pages. Each page load carries a one-time key, so a double click, a retry after a flaky connection or a second tab returns the page that already exists.

Address rules

Pingara tidies what you type. Capital letters become lowercase, any character other than a letter, number or hyphen becomes a hyphen, repeated hyphens become one, and a hyphen at the start or end is removed. Then the address must follow these rules:

• It is 1 to 63 characters. A longer address is refused, and Pingara never cuts it short for you.
• It cannot be one of these reserved words: login, signup, forgot-password, reset-password, verify-email, invite and api. They are used by Pingara's own pages, so a status page at one of them could never be reached. Only the whole word is reserved, so login-help is fine.
• It cannot already be in use by another status page. Addresses are shared across all of Pingara, so "This URL slug is already in use" can mean a page in another organization.

The same rules apply in the Create Status Page dialog, and when you change an address in Edit status page. A page whose address was set before these rules existed stays editable until you change its address.

Choose the monitors

• A page can show up to 50 monitors. Choosing more is refused and Pingara never drops the extras silently.
• Active monitors are listed first. A paused monitor is marked Paused, and you can still choose it.
• The first time you reach this step, every active monitor is already ticked, up to 50, and a paused monitor never is. Untick any you do not want. Select all active ticks every active monitor again, unless that would be more than 50. Then it tells you how many and asks you to untick some first.
• Display names and groups are set afterward, in Manage Monitors and Groups.

Status page limits

Free includes 1 status page and Pro up to 10. The count is every status page your organization has, private pages included.

Below the limit, the form shows no plan message and no upgrade link. At the limit, Guided setup opens on "You've reached your status page limit" instead of step 1, so you do not fill in a name and address only to be refused. A Free organization is offered Upgrade to Pro and Go to status pages. A Pro organization is offered Go to status pages and a way to contact support, and never an upgrade link, because there is no larger plan. Your saved draft is kept, and the notice shows again if you come back to it.

Guided setup for alerts

Open Guided setup at the top of Settings → Alert Policies, or go to /settings/alerts/new. It sets up an alert policy, its alert types, its channels and the monitors it covers in one go. It has five steps and a progress line, and it uses no AI. Owners, admins and editors can use it, and you need a verified email address. Nothing changes until you press Create alert setup.

An alert policy decides which alerts are sent for the monitors it covers, and which channels they go to. See Setting Up Alerts for how policies work.

1. Policy. Create a new policy and give it a name, or update one you already have. Your plan sometimes makes this choice for you. See Alert policy limits. A name for a new policy can be up to 100 characters, and Pingara refuses a name another policy already uses, a turned-off policy included.
2. Alert types. Five switches: Down, Degraded, Recovery, SSL certificate expiry and Pause and resume. A new policy starts with all five on. For a policy you already have, the form shows its current settings, and what you change is saved to it. Domain expiry and monitoring interruption alerts are always sent.
3. Channels. Choose channels you already have, and add new ones: email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, PagerDuty or a webhook. One setup can add up to 5 new channels and attach up to 20 you already have. You can continue without a channel. A channel's name and details, such as a webhook address or a routing key, are only saved when you press Create alert setup, and never in your saved draft.
4. Monitors. Choose the monitors the policy covers. The first time you reach this step, every active monitor that is not already on the policy is ticked, up to 50, and a paused monitor never is. Untick any you do not want, or tick a paused one, which is marked Paused. Select all active ticks every active monitor again, unless that would be more than 50. Then it tells you how many and asks you to untick some first. If you have no monitors yet, you can save the policy now and add monitors later.
5. Check and create. The summary shows the policy, its alert types, its channels and its monitors. Press Create alert setup.

Everything is saved in one step, so a refusal at the end leaves nothing half done: no channel, no policy and no monitor link. Pressing Create alert setup twice does not set up alerts twice. Each page load carries a one-time key, so a double click, a retry after a flaky connection or a second tab returns the setup that already exists.

Who gets the alerts

Channels you set up here get every alert this policy sends, whatever each member has chosen in their own notification settings. If a member's address is on an email channel here, they get these alerts even if they have turned them off for themselves.

What Guided setup changes

On a policy you already have, Guided setup only adds. It adds the channels and monitors you choose and saves the alert types you changed, and nothing else. It never removes a channel or a monitor, never renames the policy, never turns it on or off, and never changes its escalation or repeat settings. Channels and monitors already on the policy show as ticked and cannot be unticked there. To remove one, go to Settings → Alert Policies.

Guided setup cannot update a policy that is turned off, because a turned-off policy sends nothing: the channels and monitors you added would do nothing until someone turned it on. It says: "This alert policy is turned off, so it can't be changed here. Turn it on in Settings > Alert Policies, or choose another policy." It never turns a paused monitor back on.

Alert policy limits

Free includes 1 alert policy and Pro up to 20. The count is the alert policies that are turned on. A policy that is turned off does not count, but its name still cannot be reused.

• Below the limit, the form offers Create a new policy and, when you have one turned on, Update an existing policy. It shows no plan message and no upgrade link.
• At the limit, a new policy is not offered, and the setup updates one you already have. On Free with one policy turned on, that policy is chosen for you, and the form says: "Your Free plan includes one alert policy, so this setup updates the one you already have. The next steps show its current settings, and what you change there is saved to it." It also points to Pro for a separate policy. If more than one is turned on, you choose which to update.
• On Pro at the limit, you choose which policy to update, and the form never shows an upgrade link, because there is no larger plan. To add a new policy, turn off or delete one you no longer use, or contact support at support@pingara.io.

A new organization starts with one Default Policy that is turned on, so on Free this setup normally updates the Default Policy. If another member turns a policy on while your form is open, Pingara takes you back to the policy step with the new counts.

On Free, the monitors you add become covered by the policy you are updating. The monitors step says: "Your Free plan includes one alert policy, so this setup updates {policy name}. The monitors you add will also send alerts to this policy's channels, including any you chose in the channels step. Members still get their usual email alerts for these monitors, following their own notification settings. From now on, the alert types switched on in {policy name} decide what is sent for these monitors. If you turn one off here later, that alert stops for these monitors completely: on every channel, and in every member's email."

When you turn an alert type off

Turning an alert type off for a policy can stop that alert for monitors. The form works out which, from your other alert policies and the monitors you have chosen so far, and shows one of these under the switch for each alert type that is off. Because it uses the monitors you have chosen so far, what you see can change as you choose monitors: a new policy covers no monitors until you do. The last step shows the final result.

When some alerts would stop, the last step adds: "Some alerts will stop. Check the list above before you create this setup." The check reflects your policies when you open the form. If another admin changes a policy in the meantime, the monitor's Effective Alert Settings card on its page shows the settings in force.

Ara

Ara answers questions about Pingara and about your organization's own monitors, incidents, SLA status and status pages. If your role can add monitors, status pages and alert setups, it also helps you set one up by talking it through. Open it with the Ask Ara button.

• Ask about Pingara. Ara answers from the help center and from facts about your plan, such as which check intervals you can use. When a help center article covers your question, Ara adds up to two links under its reply, labeled Read: followed by the article title. They point only to help center pages.
• Ask about your account. Ara reads a read-only summary of your monitors, incidents and status pages and answers from it, for example "Which of my monitors are down?" See Ask Ara about your account.
• Describe what you want to watch. If you are an owner, admin or editor, Ara asks a few questions, then proposes a type, a name and an interval.
• Review and create. When the address checks out, press Review and create. Ara opens the monitor form with your answers filled in. Nothing exists until you press Create there. You can also press Continue in Guided setup to carry on in the guided steps.
• Set up a status page. Ask Ara to set up a status page and, if you are an owner, admin or editor, it asks for a name, an address, which monitors the page should show and whether it is public or private. It keeps your answers in a saved draft. A status page has no address to check, so Ara runs no reachability check for it. There is one exception: if you type an address while setting up a monitor and Ara then moves on to a status page, it has already saved and checked that address for the monitor. When it gets to the last step, press Review and create. Ara opens the Guided setup form at /status-pages/new with your answers filled in, and the page exists only after you press Create status page there.
• Set up alerts. If you are an owner, admin or editor, Ara asks which alert types you want, which kinds of channel and which monitors, and keeps your answers in a saved draft. A new policy gets a name from you, and an existing policy is chosen in the form. Ara never asks for a webhook address, a routing key or an email address, and a channel's name and details go only into the form. When it gets to the last step, press Review and create. Ara opens the Guided setup form at /settings/alerts/new with your answers filled in, and nothing changes until you press Create alert setup there. If you ask Ara who gets the alerts, it answers with the sentence under Who gets the alerts and nothing broader. Ara never says what turning an alert type off would stop. The form shows what will change before you create.
• Switch between kinds. Ask for a status page while you are setting up a monitor, for alerts while you are setting up a status page, or any other pair, and Ara switches. The draft you leave is kept for its own 7 days, and you can pick it up again. Nothing from Ara's reply is added to the draft you leave, but an address you typed while setting up a monitor is saved to that draft before Ara replies. An alerts setup never saves or checks an address.

Once your organization has monitors, Ara answers your question and does not steer you back to setting one up. Ask for Add another monitor and it helps you with that. If you have an unfinished setup, Ara carries on with the one you changed most recently, and if you left a monitor half set up, it may offer once to pick it up again.

Every member can ask Ara questions, about Pingara or about your account. Only setting up a monitor, a status page or alerts needs a role that can create them, which is owner, admin or editor. If you are a viewer and ask Ara to add one, it tells you that your role cannot, and suggests asking an owner or admin.

Choose a Guided setup from Ara

If your role can add monitors, status pages and alert setups (owner, admin or editor), the top of Ara's window has a Use Guided setup instead button. Press it and Ara adds a short card at the end of the conversation asking "What would you like to set up?", with one link for each Guided setup:

• A monitor opens the monitor form.
• A status page opens the status page form.
• Alerts opens the alerts form.

If you were already setting one of them up with Ara, that option also says In progress. Following a link closes Ara and opens that form. Back to chat, or Escape, closes the card and puts you back on the button. The card is only on your screen: Ara does not see it, and it is not saved with the conversation.

Until your organization has a monitor, the card shows the monitor option alone, with the sentence "You need to set up your first monitor before a status page or alerts." While Pingara is still checking, or cannot tell, it shows the monitor option alone and leaves the sentence out. A setup you have in progress is always offered as well, so you can get back to it. Viewers do not see the button, because their role cannot create any of the three. The card makes no plan-limit decision: each form shows its own notice if your organization is at a limit.

Suggested replies

When you open Ara before saying anything, it shows up to four suggested replies above the message box. Pressing one sends its text as your own message, exactly as written. There is no hidden prompt behind it.

Up to two of the four come from your organization's recent activity, worded as if you were asking:

The rest of the row is general questions, such as "What is Apdex?" or "How do alerts work?". A long monitor name is cut to 24 characters and ends with "…". A monitor whose name contains an IP address, an email address or a key gets no suggestion, because Ara's account summary would redact it. Paused monitors and test incidents never produce a suggestion.

The shuffle button at the end of the row, Show other suggestions, draws a different set when one exists, and Start over draws again. The suggestions step aside while the Guided setup card is open and return when you press Back to chat. After you send your first message, the replies under Ara's answers are Ara's own.

Pingara works these out on its servers from your monitors and incidents, once each time you open Ara, and sends your browser only a monitor name, a start time, a count and a failure category, never a web address, a host name or an error message. A monitor gets at most one suggestion. Nothing from that read goes to Google. Pressing a suggestion does send its text, including the monitor name, to Ara like anything else you type. If an owner or admin has switched off AI access to account data, the suggestions about your organization are hidden and only the general ones show. If the read fails, the general ones show too.

Picking monitors for a status page

Ara chooses monitors for a page only from the account summary it read for that message, so it can pick from the 25 monitors it can see (see Limits). A list of monitors from Ara replaces the page's earlier choice, and an empty list clears it. If a list includes a monitor that was not in that message's summary, Pingara ignores the whole list and keeps your earlier choice, so nothing you picked is removed by mistake. A page can show up to 50 monitors in total, and you can choose beyond the 25 in the Guided setup form. If an owner or admin has switched off AI access to account data, Ara cannot see your monitors at all, so you choose them in the form.

Ara at the status page limit

When your organization is at its status page limit, Ara does not start a status page. It answers with a fixed message instead, and it saves nothing. On Free, it says your organization is at the Free plan's limit and that you can edit the page you have, delete one you no longer need, or upgrade to Pro in Settings, Billing. On Pro, it says the limit has been reached and that you can delete a page you no longer need or contact support. Ara still answers questions about status pages. Your role comes first: if you are a viewer, Ara tells you your role cannot create one and does not mention an upgrade.

Ara and your alert policy limit

When your organization has used all the alert policies its plan includes, Ara still helps with alerts, but the setup updates a policy you already have, and Ara does not ask you for a policy name. On Free, it may say once that Pro includes more alert policies. On Pro, it never suggests an upgrade. It may say that you can turn off or delete a policy you no longer use, or contact support. Your role still comes first.

Ara only talks about Pingara and how it works, which includes the account data described below. It politely declines anything else. It is read-only: it cannot create, change, pause or delete anything itself. If it is unavailable or slow, it says so, and for members who can add monitors a button opens the guided steps instead. It reads Continue in Guided setup if you were setting up a monitor or a status page with Ara, and opens that setup's own form. It reads Open Guided setup and opens the monitor form if you were only asking questions.

Ask Ara about your account

Good to know: Pingara builds a summary of your account when you send each message, and Ara answers from it. Ara is an AI model and can be wrong, so treat an answer as a pointer and check the monitor or incident page it links to. If an owner or admin has switched off AI access to account data, Ara cannot see any of this.

Try this: ask "Which of my monitors need attention?" or "How is my SLA looking?". On an incident's page, ask "What happened here?".

Ara sends the summary with every message you send it, whether you are asking a question or setting up a monitor or a status page, while your organization allows it.

What Ara can see

Names go through the same redaction as your messages. It works by spotting the shape of web addresses, emails and keys, so it is a safeguard and not a promise that a name is clean.

What Ara never gets

• Full web addresses, only host names
• The names or email addresses of your members, and who acknowledged or worked on an incident
• The notes or root cause text a member writes on an incident
• The error messages recorded with an incident or its checks
• A monitor's request headers or body
• Status page subscribers
• Pingara's internal identifiers for any of these
• Your alert channels, with their names, addresses, web addresses and keys, and your alert policies. A policy you are updating through alert setup is the one exception, and only its five on or off settings reach Ara, never its name. See What happens to what you type

Your email address is never sent either. The privacy policy lists exactly what Ara receives.

Limits

Ara sees a bounded slice of a large account, and it says so when a monitor you ask about is not in it.

Those are the most Ara can see, not what it always lists. When the summary of a large account is over its size limit, Pingara leaves things out in this order until it fits:

1. Status pages beyond the first 5.
2. Resolved incidents, except the one whose page you are on.
3. Monitors that are not down or degraded, that you did not name in your message and that are not the monitor of the incident whose page you are on, with their incidents.
4. Open incidents, except the one whose page you are on.

Ara says how many of each it is not showing and points you to the Monitors, Incidents or Status pages page. Down and degraded monitors, up to 3 monitors you name, and the incident whose page you are on are never left out.

Times are UTC. A figure over a window is history, not how things are now: a monitor that is down right now can still show 100 percent over the last 7 days. Ara always gives the window with the figure, and the counts too, for example "99.9 percent of 10,080 checks (10 failed)". Ara never says 100 percent while a check failed. It says "over 99.99 percent" instead. Ara does not turn uptime into minutes of downtime, and it does not say "all week", because a monitor created two days ago has a 7-day figure over two days.

Some figures are deliberately cautious:

• p95 is the median of the daily p95 figures over the 7 days, not the p95 of the whole week.
• Apdex is shown only when the monitor had one threshold for the whole 7 days.
• No checks reads "no checks recorded". Ara never says 100 percent or "met" for a window with no checks.
• SLA status ("met", "at risk", "breached") is Pingara's figure for that window or month, not a ruling on a contract.
• Days with uptime below target counts the days whose own uptime fell below the target. It is not hours or minutes of downtime, and a month can be met overall with some of those days.

How Ara describes a status

Ara calls everything in the summary an incident and never an outage or downtime, because an incident is a record Pingara opened and not a measure of what your visitors saw. It gives an incident's error type as recorded and never as a cause.

Latency spikes

A latency spike is a rise in a monitor's p95 response time compared with the same monitor's own recent hours. Ara reports one only when Pingara's rule finds it, and only for monitors that check often enough to measure p95 reliably. Ara does not decide it, and it does not work one out.

Pingara looks at the last 3 completed hours and reports the newest one that meets all of these:

The 90 and 110 percent tests mean an hour from before you added or removed a region, or changed the interval, is left out instead of being read as a slowdown. The 40-check floor means one slow check can never be a spike. So in practice:

• Pro monitors that check every 30 seconds or every minute, from any number of regions, can get a spike reading, and so can Pro monitors that check every 5 minutes from all four regions.
• Free monitors never do. They check from one region at most every 5 minutes, which is 12 checks an hour.
• Monitors that check every 10 minutes or less often never do, on any plan.

When there is a spike, Ara names the hour in UTC, says "p95 response time in that hour", and gives the figure it was compared with. It also says that the figure pools every region the monitor checks from, so a change to the monitor's regions or address in that time also moves it. A swap of one region for another, or a changed address, cannot be seen from the data Pingara keeps, and neither can a weekly cycle such as Mondays against Sundays. Ara never gives a cause for a spike, never calls it an outage, and never says "in the last hour".

No reading is not a clean bill of health. Most monitors are not eligible, so when Ara has no spike for a monitor it says it has no spike reading, and never "no spikes", "stable" or "normal". Open the response time chart on the monitor's page to look for yourself.

Jitter

Ara reports jitter from the same hourly measurement as the jitter card on a monitor's page. See Response time, percentiles and jitter for how Pingara measures and colors it. It is one reading for one hour in one region, and Ara words it that way: the region, the hour in UTC, the jitter in milliseconds on that region's mean for the hour, the percentage, and the color, green, amber or red. When more than one region was measured, Ara adds which was the least steady of how many.

• Ara says "in the last hour" only when the reading is for the most recent completed hour. Otherwise it says it is the most recent measured hour.
• The reading is the newest hourly measurement, and it is used only when that hour has a reading and is no more than 23 hours old. Ara never falls back to an older hour, so a monitor paused last week does not get a jitter answer.
• Ara reports a pattern only when one region was amber or red in at least 2 of the last 3 measured hours.
• Below 1 ms Ara says "under 1 ms", never "0 ms".
• Ara does not call a site or a monitor steady, stable, smooth, consistent or jittery. A green reading is "in the green range for that hour", never "no jitter".

A monitor with no reading, for example one that checks every 30 or 60 minutes, gets "jitter is not available for it". Ara does not say zero, and it does not say steady.

The incident page you have open

When you open Ara on an incident's page, Ara knows which incident you mean. It always includes that incident, even if it is older than 30 days or beyond the 15-incident limit, as long as it belongs to your organization. If it does not, Ara ignores the page and answers as if you had not opened one. Ara reads the page when you send each message, so it follows you from page to page.

For that incident Ara gets:

• How long it lasted, or has lasted so far
• The response time of the check that opened it. That is one check, not an average over the incident, and for a down incident it is often the timeout, so Ara does not use it to say how slow your site was
• How many checks failed in each region while it was open. For a long incident Ara reads a capped number of checks per region and says "at least"
• The type and time of each event on the timeline, such as acknowledged, status changed or a note was updated. It never gets what a note says, and the timeline names no one, so Ara cannot say who did something
• Whether it was a simulated test

If the incident has an AI incident report, Ara also gets the report's summary and up to 3 of its likely causes, with the confidence the report gave each and when it was written. An AI model wrote the report from the incident's checks, so it can describe an error in its own words. Pingara cuts web addresses in it down to host names and removes paths, query strings, IP addresses, quoted text, emails and anything that looks like a key or token. This works by spotting shapes, as with your messages. Ara never gets the report's evidence, timeline or recommendations.

Ara treats the report as something that may be wrong. It says "the AI incident report suggested ..." with the confidence and the date it was written, never as a fact or as how things are now.

Links Ara can give

Under a reply Ara can add up to 2 links to a monitor or incident page, labeled Monitor: or Incident:, besides up to 2 Read: links to help center articles. Ara only links a monitor or incident that was in the summary it read for that message, so it cannot link one that was cut by the limits above. Pingara builds each link and its title itself, a monitor's name or an incident's monitor name with its start time in UTC, so Ara cannot make up a link. The page that opens checks your permission as usual. Ara does not link to status pages yet.

What happens to what you type

• Pingara does not store the chat text. Pingara does not keep or log what you and Ara write. Apart from the copy Google keeps, described in the next point, the conversation lives only in your browser tab and is cleared when you close it. That includes the figures and incident details in Ara's replies. Pingara counts messages, so it can limit use, but not what they say.
• It is sent to Google to write a reply. Your recent messages go to Google's Gemini model, with facts about your plan and organization, such as the plan's name, how many monitors and status pages you have and the limits on them, whether your role lets you add monitors and status pages, and whether the turn is for setting up a monitor, setting up a status page or general help. Excerpts from public help center articles go with them. Web addresses are cut down to the host name only, and emails, passwords and anything that looks like a key or token are replaced with "[removed]". That filter works by shape, so do not type anything private into the chat. Google's Gemini API usage policies say Google keeps what it is sent for up to 55 days, to detect misuse of its service and to meet legal requirements.
• So is the setup you are working on. When Ara is helping you set up a monitor and your setup draft has an address in it, Ara also receives the draft's monitor type, the name and check interval you entered, the result code of its last reachability check, and whether you have already created the monitor. When Ara is helping you set up a status page, it also receives the page's name, the part of its web address you chose, whether it will be public or private, and how many monitors you have picked for it. If you have already created that page, it receives only that it was created, in place of those details. When Ara is helping you set up alerts, it also receives the name you gave a new alert policy, which of its five alert types are on or off, the kinds of channel you picked, such as email or Slack, and how many monitors you picked. If the setup updates a policy your organization already has, Ara never receives that policy's name, but the on or off settings it receives for the five alert types can be the policy's current ones, as Guided setup shows them. If you have already created that setup, Ara receives only that it was created, in place of those details. Guided setup never passes a channel's name or its details, such as a webhook address, a routing key or an email address, to Ara. If you paste one into the chat, it gets the same redaction as the rest of your message, so a web address still reaches Google as its host name. Each name goes through the same redaction as your messages. Do not put anything private in a page name or address. This includes details you entered in Guided setup: Guided setup itself uses no AI and sends nothing to Google, but what you enter there is saved as a draft, and the draft reaches Ara if you use Ara before you finish it.
• So is the account summary, while your organization allows it. Pingara builds it for each message, sends it with the rest, and does not keep a copy. It holds what is listed under "What Ara can see", and nothing from the list under "What Ara never gets".
• Your email address is never sent.

The privacy policy has the full detail.

What is saved between visits

Guided setup, and Ara when you are setting up a monitor or a status page with it, save a draft so you can pick up later on any device. Pingara keeps one draft for each kind of setup, so a monitor draft, a status page draft and an alerts draft sit side by side, and starting one does not erase the others.

• A monitor draft holds the address, the monitor type, name and interval you chose, the step you reached, and the result of the last reachability check. Any login details in the address are removed.
• A status page draft holds the page's name, the part of its web address you chose, whether it is public, the monitors you picked and the step you reached.
• An alerts draft holds the name you gave a new policy or which existing policy you chose to update, which of the five alert types are on, the kinds of channel you picked, the monitors you picked and the step you reached. A channel's name and details are never saved in the draft.

A draft is deleted 7 days after you last change it, or when you create the monitor, the status page or the alert setup, press Start over in that setup's Guided setup form, or delete your account. Start over deletes only that kind's draft. A question to Ara that is not about setting something up saves nothing.

Turn Ara off

To hide Ara:

1. Open Settings → Appearance.
2. Switch Ara, the AI assistant off.

The switch is yours alone and does not change what other members see. It appears only when Ara is available to you, or when you have turned it off before, so you can turn it back on. Turning it off hides the Ask Ara button. Guided setup still works from the Guided setup button, for a monitor, a status page and alerts, and you can use the full monitor form any time.

Switch off AI access to account data

You can turn Ara off for yourself, as above. An owner or admin can also switch off AI access to your organization's account data for everyone.

1. Open Settings → Organization.
2. Find AI access to account data.
3. Switch Allow AI access to account data off.

It is on unless an owner or admin switches it off, and it applies to every member of the organization. Every member can see whether it is on, but only owners and admins can change it. Everyone else sees "Only owners and admins can change this." Pingara checks it every time it would send account data, so a change takes effect on the next message, with no wait.

While it is off:

• Ara gets no account summary and no incident details. It still answers, and it tells members that an owner or admin switched it off in Settings, Organization.
• Ara's suggested replies are not based on your organization. The ones about an open incident, a recent incident, a monitor that keeps failing and a missing status page are hidden, and only the general questions show. The Use Guided setup instead card still works.
• Pingara does not write the automatic incident report. An incident that resolves while it is off does not get a report later, and switching it back on does not write one for it.
• Members cannot ask for root cause hints or an AI incident report. The button on the incident page and the dashboard stays in place and shows "Your organization has switched off AI access to account data. An owner or admin can switch it back on in Settings, Organization."

Switching it off deletes and hides nothing already saved. An AI incident report or root cause hints already stored on an incident still show, and only new ones are refused.

Switching it off does not turn Ara off. Ara still receives the messages a member writes, the details of any monitor or status page they are setting up and the facts about your plan, and each member can turn Ara off for themselves in Settings → Appearance. Each change to the switch is recorded in the audit log as an Organization settings changed entry for AI access to account data, with the value before and after.

Next steps

• Why can't Pingara reach my address? - What each result means and how to fix it
• Creating Your First Monitor - Every field in the full form
• Creating Status Pages - Branding, groups and everything you can change after Guided setup
• Setting Up Alerts - Add Slack, Teams, Discord and more
• SLA reports and targets - The window and status words Ara uses
• Response time, percentiles and jitter - How the jitter card Ara reads is measured