problem with alert handler instance / email plug-in

[rgcda]

I'm setting up some rules in my emailFilter.xml file.  I set up a basic rule for testing purposes and it's working.  The rule was to forward my email address all criticals and to resend every 2 minutes.  Now I want to do some additional configuration after validating email is working.  So I changed the rule and I stopped / started the alert handler instance by going to Admin > Configure outbound alert > and stopping / starting the alert handler instance.  The problem is that it appears that the old rule is still in place.  I keep on getting emails every two minutes for the critical alarms in the environment.  Even though I changed the rule and sopped / started the alert handler instance that rule is still applied and I'm getting spammed.  So I went to cancel the alarms in an attempt to reset things and it's sending me alarms for issues that are no longer even active.  How do I stop this thing from emailing me because it appears that it isn't using the present rules but the rule that I initially setup for testing.

[rgcda]

I opened a case with VMware.  The issue wasn't really an issue but more of how the email alert handler works which is kind of disappointing.  I setup a filter rule that would send me an email for every critical in our environment and resend the alarm every 2 minutes if the issue is not resolved.  I just set it up for testing.  It worked so I went to change it.  The problem is somehow vCops keeps track of those alarms that had already been generated under that filter rule if they were still applicable.  So I went and changed the filter rule and restarted the email alert handler but vCops was still using the old settings for the email alarms that had already been generated.  It started using the new filter rule for any new alarms, but used the old filter rule (even though it didn't exist anymore) for the older alarms.  The only way that it could be resolved was to restart the vCops services and then it would start using the new filter rule for all alarms including the older ones.  I don't particularly like this functionality because if I have to change a filter rule that has already been put in place and is generating email alarms I'll have to make the change and restart the services.  Pretty lame if you ask me.