Event Types

Event Types define the categories of events in your IoT system. While events are the individual records of things that happened, event types are the templates that classify those events and determine what automated actions should be triggered when they occur.

Why Event Types Matter

Event types serve two key purposes:

1. Classification - They categorize events so you can distinguish between different kinds of occurrences (e.g., device connectivity changes vs. geofence boundary crossings vs. user account modifications)
2. Automation - They let you attach automated actions - such as notifications, webhooks, or emails - that fire whenever an event of that type is generated

Without event types, events would be unstructured records. Event types give them meaning and enable automated responses.

How Event Types Work

Every event in the system is associated with exactly one event type. When the system generates an event (e.g., a Thing is updated), it assigns the event to the appropriate event type based on the resource and operation involved.

If actions are configured on that event type - for instance, a notification action - the system automatically executes those actions when the event occurs.

System Event Types

The system provides built-in event types for tracking resource operations:

• Thing - Events when IoT devices are created, updated, or deleted
• ThingType - Events when thing type definitions change
• Group - Events when groups are modified
• User - Events when user accounts change
• ThingConnectivityEvent - Events when device connectivity status changes
• Geofence - Events when a device enters or exits a geofence boundary

These event types are managed by the system and cannot be deleted.

Custom Event Types

You can create your own event types for two primary use cases:

1. Rule-generated events - When you build rules in the Rule Designer, you select a custom event type to categorize the events those rules produce. The DIP (Data Ingestion Pipeline) evaluates incoming machine telemetry against your rules and when conditions are met, creates an event of the specified type. Custom event types with the Rule Evaluation display type show a specialized detail view with the rule expression, matching conditions and actual data values.

2. External events - Third-party systems can send events to Nimbit via the API using custom event types, enabling centralized monitoring across your entire infrastructure.

By attaching actions (notifications, webhooks, emails) to custom event types, you build end-to-end automation: machine data arrives, rules evaluate it, events are created and actions fire automatically.

Event Type Visibility and Groups

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An event type must be assigned to at least one group for users to see its events. Users can only see events whose event type belongs to one of their groups. If an event type is not in any of a user's groups, the corresponding events will be invisible to that user.

When creating or editing an event type, use the Group field to assign it to the appropriate groups. This is especially important for custom event types used with the Rules Engine - if you forget to assign a group, no one will see the rule-generated events.

Accessing Event Types

Navigate to Manage > Event Types in the main sidebar under Configuration, or go directly to /manage/event-types.

Event Types Management Page

The Event Types page uses a master-detail layout.

Page Layout

Section	Description
Left panel	Searchable list of all event types, each with an icon and name
Right panel	Detail view for the selected event type, with Overview and Actions tabs
Search bar	Filter event types by name at the top of the left panel
+ Button	Create a new event type (top of left panel)

Event Type List

The left panel lists all available event types. Click any entry to view its details in the right panel. Use the search bar to filter by name (case-insensitive, real-time filtering).

A collapse/expand button between the left and right panels lets you toggle the left panel visibility.

Creating an Event Type

Click the + button at the top of the left panel to open the Create dialog.

Fields

Field	Required	Description
Name	✅ Yes	A descriptive name for the event type (max 128 characters)
Search tags	❌ No	Tags for categorizing and finding the event type
Group	❌ No	Assign the event type to one or more groups. Users can only see events whose event type is in one of their groups. While technically optional, this field is required in practice for events to be visible to users.
Description	❌ No	A description of the event type's purpose. Supports multiple languages (EN/DE) via a language selector
Display type	✅ Yes	Controls how events of this type are displayed in the UI. Options: Default or Rule Evaluation

Click Save to create the event type. It will immediately appear in the left panel list.

Display Types

• Default - Standard event display with severity icon, title and resource information. Use this for general-purpose event types, external events and system resource tracking.
• Rule Evaluation - Specialized display for events generated by the Rules Engine via the DIP. When viewing events of this type, an additional Rule Evaluation tab appears showing the rule expression, evaluation status, which conditions matched and the actual telemetry values that triggered the rule. Use this display type for any event type that will be referenced by rules in the Rule Designer.

Event Type Detail View

Select an event type from the list to view its details.

Header

The header shows:

• Event type name as the heading
• New tag button - Add tags to the event type
• Edit button - Modify the event type settings
• Delete button - Remove the event type
• Last update - Timestamp of the most recent modification
• Changed by - The user or system that last modified the event type

Tabs

Tab	Description
Overview	General information and an example event payload
Actions	Automated actions configured for this event type

Overview Tab

General Information

A table showing key properties of the event type:

Property	Description
Name	The display name
ID	Unique identifier for the event type
Description	The event type's purpose description
Display type	How events of this type are rendered (Default or Rule Evaluation)

Example Payload

The Overview tab includes an example JSON payload showing the structure that events of this type will have. This is useful when building integrations or configuring webhooks, as it shows the exact data format you can expect.

The payload structure includes:

Field	Description
title	Human-readable event title
status	Current status of the event
severity	Severity level: INFO, WARNING, ERROR, or CRITICAL
source	Where the event originated
eventTimestamp	When the event occurred (ISO 8601 format)
externalId	Identifier from an external system, if applicable
correlationId	Links related events from the same operation
eventTypeId	The ID of this event type
payload	Custom data specific to the event - structure varies by event type
referenceId	The ID of the resource that generated the event
resource	The resource type (Thing, Group, User, etc.)

Actions Tab

Actions are automated responses that the system executes whenever an event of this type occurs. You can configure multiple actions per event type to build comprehensive automation workflows.

Viewing Actions

The Actions tab shows:

• Actions (N) - A heading with the count of configured actions
• A list of all configured actions, or an empty state with a Create action button if none exist

Creating an Action

Click Create action to open the action creation dialog.

Action Types

Choose from three action types:

Type	Description
Notification	Send in-app notifications with customizable severity, subject and message
Webhook	Send HTTP requests to external systems when events occur
Email	Send email notifications to specified recipients

Notification Action

Notification actions create in-app alerts that appear in the notification center.

Step 1: General

Field	Required	Description
Name	✅ Yes	Internal name for the action
Description	❌ No	Description of what this action does
Subject	✅ Yes	The notification subject line
Severity	✅ Yes	How prominent the notification appears: Information, Warning, Error, or Critical
Message	✅ Yes	The notification body text

Step 2: Users and Groups

Select which users and/or groups should receive the notification when the event fires.

Webhook Action

Webhook actions send HTTP requests to external endpoints, enabling integration with third-party systems, external monitoring tools, or custom business logic.

Email Action

Email actions send email messages to specified recipients. Configure recipients, subject and body content. Email templates can be managed under Manage > Mail Template.

Saving Actions

Complete all required fields, click Continue to proceed through multi-step dialogs where applicable, then click Save. The action is immediately active and will trigger on the next event of this type.

Common Use Cases

Rule-Based Machine Monitoring

Create a custom event type with the Rule Evaluation display type (e.g., "Temperature Alert"). In the Rule Designer, define a rule that evaluates incoming temperature telemetry and triggers when values exceed a threshold. Attach a Notification action with Critical severity and an Email action so your team is alerted immediately when a machine overheats. When the rule fires, the event's Rule Evaluation tab shows exactly which sensor values triggered the alert.

Device Connectivity Monitoring

Attach a Notification action (Warning severity) and an Email action to the ThingConnectivityEvent type so your team is alerted immediately when a device goes offline.

Geofence Boundary Alerts

Configure the Geofence event type with a Webhook action to notify an external fleet management system when a tracked device enters or exits a defined geographic zone.

End-to-End Automation Pipeline

Combine custom event types with the Rules Engine for fully automated workflows:

1. Create a custom event type with actions configured (e.g., webhook to your ticketing system)
2. Build a rule in the Rule Designer that references this event type
3. When machine data meets the rule's conditions, the DIP creates an event
4. The event type's actions fire automatically - creating a support ticket, sending notifications and alerting on-call staff

Audit and Compliance

Use Email actions on User and Group event types to maintain an email-based audit trail of all access and permission changes.

External System Integration

Attach Webhook actions to Thing event types to synchronize resource changes with an external asset management or ERP system in real time.

Best Practices

1. Name clearly - Use descriptive names for event types and actions so their purpose is immediately obvious
2. Match severity to importance - Reserve Critical and Error for genuinely urgent situations; use Information for routine operations
3. Combine action types - Use notifications for immediate in-app awareness, emails for offline team members and webhooks for system integrations
4. Test actions - After creating an action, trigger a test event to verify that notifications arrive, webhooks fire correctly and emails are delivered
5. Use the example payload - Consult the Overview tab's example payload when building webhook integrations to ensure your receiving system handles the correct data format
6. Organize with tags - Apply search tags to event types so you can quickly filter and find them as your system grows

Related Pages

• Events - View and manage event instances (Monitor > Events)
• Rule Designer - Create automation rules that can generate events (Automation > Rule Designer)
• Mail Template - Configure email templates used by email actions (Manage > Mail Template)