The Critical & High Severity row

What this row is

Signals is where Verinode HQ surfaces patterns that are showing up across more than one franchisee at the same time, not a single location's problem but a network-wide one. The Critical & High Severity row is the row on that page reserved for the open signals that need leadership's attention now. Every other row on the page (By Domain, Recent, Resolved) is a different cut of the same underlying signal set. This row is the one filtered cut: only signals whose severity is Critical or High, and only while they are still open.

A signal here is written by the nightly network aggregator, not by any single franchisee's data. Verinode never surfaces one franchisee's private numbers to HQ, what this row shows is a pattern: a meaningful share of active franchisees hitting the same signal type at the same severity within a recent window. The empty state on the hero above this row spells out the trigger in plain terms: the aggregator fires a network-level signal once at least 30% of active members hit the same pattern within a severity threshold. Below that share, it stays a local, franchisee-level matter and never reaches HQ at all.

Where to find it

Open Signals directly at hq.verinode.ai/signals. The Critical & High Severity row is the second row on the page, directly under the Network Signals hero (the headline open count plus the Critical, High + Medium, and Resolved 30d figures). If you got to a specific signal from elsewhere (the Feed's critical hand-off button, or a signal-count badge elsewhere in the product), you land in the same detail view this row opens into.

For the hero numbers above this row and the rest of the page (By Domain, Recent, Resolved), see Signals: the hero panel, the By Domain row, and the Recent and Resolved rows. For the network-wide context these signals sit inside, see Network health and HQ overview.

Anatomy of one tile

Every open Critical or High signal renders as a double-width action tile, twice the width of a standard browse tile, with a solid colored rail down its left edge marking it as something to act on rather than just browse. Up to 8 tiles fill the row, scrollable left to right if there are more; sorted worst-first (Critical before High) and, within the same severity, most recently detected first.

Each tile carries these elements:

• Severity chip. A filled pill in the top-left reading Critical or High. Both severities render in the same Ember Red accent, the left rail, the chip background, and the icon all pick up that color regardless of which of the two it is, so the row reads as "urgent" at a glance. The chip text is what tells you which of the two you are looking at.
• Type icon. A small glyph next to the chip identifying the kind of pattern, drawn from the signal's underlying type and domain: a margin glyph for a profitability pattern, a shield for a compliance pattern, a hard hat for a safety pattern, and so on. It gives you a visual shorthand before you read a word of the title.
• Title (headline). The signal's plain-language title, the sentence describing the pattern itself, for example the kind of thing that would read as "collections stalling past a carrier's usual window" or "a compliance renewal lapsing." This is the one line to actually read on the tile.
• Sub-line: "X of Y franchisees affected." When the signal carries an affected count and a total count, the sub-line reads exactly that: how many franchisees are currently exhibiting the pattern, out of how many were counted for it. If a signal doesn't carry those counts, the sub-line falls back to the signal's domain name instead (for example "Cash Flow" or "Compliance").
• Meta line: "Detected …". A relative timestamp for when the aggregator first raised the signal: "Detected today," "Detected yesterday," "Detected 3d ago," "Detected 2w ago," or "Detected 4mo ago" once it's aged past a month. This tells you how long the pattern has been sitting open.
• Coverage visual (the dot grid). On the right side of the tile, set off by a thin divider, sits a dot grid: one dot for every active franchisee counted for this signal, with the affected ones filled in the severity's tone (red for Critical, amber for High) and the rest left as neutral placeholders. Underneath it, a caption spells the same thing out in numbers: "X of Y · Z%", for example "6 of 18 · 33%." The grid and the caption are two views of the same fact, so you can read it as a shape or as a number depending on which lands faster for you.

If a signal doesn't carry an affected/total count at all, the tile simply has no coverage visual, just the icon, chip, title, sub, and meta.

How to read it

1. 1Scan the chip colors first. Every tile in this row is already Critical or High, there is nothing lower-severity mixed in, so the row itself is your first filter.
2. 2Read the dot grid before the title if you want the blunt reach number fast: a tile with most of its dots filled in is a pattern hitting the majority of the network, one with only one or two filled dots is narrower but still met the network-wide bar to surface at all.
3. 3Read the title and sub-line together: the title tells you what the pattern is, the "X of Y franchisees affected" line tells you how far it has spread.
4. 4Check the "Detected" meta. A pattern that's been open for weeks and still spreading is a different conversation than one that just appeared today.
5. 5Click the tile.

Clicking any tile opens the signal's full detail as a right-side panel over the page. It loads the fuller record in the background (a "Loading…" state shows briefly), then fills in:

• Chips: severity, domain, and status (Open, Seen, or Resolved), restated at the top.
• The pattern description, the same underlying explanation the aggregator wrote when it raised the signal.
• A four-figure grid: Affected (the count, with "of N franchisees" underneath), Network reach (the same ratio as a percentage, captioned "of active members"), Fire threshold (the minimum share of the network that had to hit the pattern before it was allowed to fire at all, captioned "minimum to trip-wire"), and Detected (the full timestamp, with a Resolved timestamp underneath if it has since closed).
• Affected franchisees, a list of the specific locations exhibiting the pattern, each with an "Open profile →" link into that franchisee's record. Whether a name shows as the real location name or as an anonymized label depends on how your network is configured; HQ still never receives the underlying business detail behind why a franchisee is on the list, only that it is. Three variations you may see instead of a populated list: "Loading…" while the panel fetches it; "This signal predates the per-franchisee roster capture… The next nightly aggregator run will populate the list; until then only the affected count is recorded" for older signals written before per-franchisee capture existed; or "No affected franchisees recorded" when none were captured.
• Sample signal, when the aggregator kept one, a single representative example that tripped the pattern, shown as a short title plus a structured evidence excerpt. This is the pattern-level evidence the detector used, not a franchisee's full business record.
• Signal type, the raw internal identifier for the pattern at the very bottom, useful mainly if you're describing the issue to Verinode support.

Empty state

When there is nothing open at Critical or High severity, the row shows a single line in place of any tiles:

No critical or high-severity signals currently open across the network.

This is the state you want to see most days. It does not mean nothing is happening across the network, lower-severity Medium and Low signals can still be open and visible in the By Domain row, it means nothing has crossed the Critical or High bar right now.

Best-practice example

Say the row shows two tiles: a Critical tile reading "Carrier payment timelines slipping past historical norms," 7 of 18 franchisees affected, detected 3 weeks ago, and a High tile reading "Cert renewal lapses rising," 4 of 18 franchisees affected, detected yesterday. Work the Critical one first, both on severity and on age, three weeks open and spreading is worth a same-week conversation with the affected franchisees or their regional lead. Click through, check the affected list, and use "Open profile →" to see whether the same handful of locations keep showing up across other signals too, that's usually the more useful pattern than any single signal on its own. The High tile is newer and narrower; worth flagging to your compliance owner, but not necessarily an escalation on day one.

Data sources