For monitoring centres and self-monitored companies, Blackline Live’s alert banner is an extremely useful tool for quickly managing incoming alerts. A combination of moving visuals and noise can quickly catch your attention and guide you to action. When the portal audio is muted, this can result in alerts going unnoticed and unacknowledged. If you notice that you cannot hear alerts from the portal, something in your system might be muting the alert audio. Please go through the following settings to ensure that none of them are muting alerts in Blackline Live.
Monitors and speakers
If your computer is connected to any external monitors or speakers, output volume can be controlled through them as well. Even if your computer or operating system volume is on, muting any external speakers will not allow the sound will not come through. Check your speakers and monitor for external volume controls and ensure they are not set to mute.
Blackline Live account settings
There are settings within Blackline Live account that can influence the volume of alerts in the portal. To check your settings:
- Click menu in the nav bar and select team members from the dropdown menu.
- Click the team member whose account settings need to be changed. This will redirect you to their team member profile.
- Scroll down to the account settings card. Ensure that the alarm volume slider is not all the way to the left — if it is, the alert sound will be muted whenever they log in.
- Click on the edit button in the right-hand corner of the account settings card to make changes.
- Click and drag the slider to the right to increase the alarm volume.
- Click save when your changes have been made.
Browser settings
When using an internet browser to access Blackline Live, it is possible that alerts are not audible because your browser tab has become muted. How you access your browser volume settings depends on which browser you are using:
Browser autoplay policy
(edited as of June 25, 2018) New browser autoplay policies have made it so that Chrome and Safari browsers will automatically disable the autoplay of audio on websites. This unfortunately means that by default, Blackline Live's alert audio will be disabled as well. Please enable autoplay on your browser in order to hear audio from Blackline Live and ensure alerts are not being missed.
Google Chrome
- Go to this URL: chrome://flags/#autoplay-policy
- Change the autoplay policy settings from "Disabled" to "No user gesture is required". These settings will apply to your browser as a whole.
- Fully close the browser and re-open it.
Safari
- Go to live.blacklinesafety.com
- Select "Settings for this website" by clicking on the Safari dropdown in the top menu bar or right clicking on the website URL.
- Change the Auto-play settings from "Stop media with sound" to "Allow all auto-play". These settings will only apply to Blackline Live.
Browser mute settings
Google Chrome Google Chrome gives the option to mute specific websites by right-clicking on individual tabs. Keep in mind that if you mute a site, close the site and then come back to it later, it will still be muted.
- While Blackline Live is open, check the tab. If the tab shows a speaker icon with a slash through it, the tab has been muted. If the speaker icon is not visible, you can also right click on the Blackline Live tab and scroll down the menu to see if the option “Unmute site” is available.
- Right-click on the tab to open the tab menu.
- Click “Unmute site” in order to hear sound from Blackline Live again.
In older versions of Chrome, muting was done by tab rather than by specific sites. You can right-click the tab and select “Unmute tab” in order to hear sound from that tab again.
Mozilla Firefox Firefox shows you which tab is making noise with a speaker icon. By clicking the icon, you can quickly mute the volume on that particular tab. If you notice that the icon is indicating the volume on your Blackline Live tab is muted, click the icon to turn it back on. You can also right-click and select "Unmute tab" to hear audio from this tab.
Safari Safari is similar to Firefox in that a microphone icon will indicate whether the volume in a tab is muted or not. When using Safari, you can simply click the icon to mute it. Be sure to check that the Blackline Live tab does not have this setting muted. 
Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge Unlike the other browsers, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge volume levels are not managed through the actual browser, but through the system preferences instead.- Right-click the microphone icon in the Microsoft’s task manager at the bottom right of the screen.
- Open the volume mixer. This will display the different sources of audio output coming from your computer.
- Find the slider for the browser you are using and ensure that the slider is not at the very bottom.
- Lastly, make sure that the icon underneath the slider does not have a slash through it — if it does, this means the entire browser is muted. Click the icon in order to unmute it. This button works independently from the slider, so make sure you check both.
Browser plug-ins
Ensure if you have any browser plug-ins that mute noise from your browser — like Muter on Firefox or MuteTab on Chrome — that they are turned off while using Blackline Live. Having these plug-in features activated while using Blackline Live will result in the alert sounds being muted.
Operating system
Volume can be controlled through your operating system — these levels will dictate how much volume is being generated on your computer. You can manipulate these settings through your operating system preferences.
On Mac computers
- Click on the apple icon in the top menu bar
- Click on "System preferences"
- Click on the "Sound" option
- Check the output volume slider at the bottom of the window. Ensure that the slider is not at the far left and that the “mute” checkbox is unchecked.
On Windows computers
Windows operating systems allow you to manipulate each browser’s volume settings through the operating system preferences. These settings allow you to manipulate each browser’s volume from a control panel, rather than from the browser itself.
- Click “Start” at the bottom left of your screen
- Open the “control panel” and select “adjust system volume”
- The volume mixer will allow you to manipulate external speakers and system sounds as well as individual browsers. Ensure the volume sliders are not pulled all the way to the bottom, and that the mute icon at the bottom has not been selected.
If your keyboard also has volume control keys, you can use these to adjust your operating system volume.
