diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index c91a60bcb049fb57f9afc4406c6761a92fd02424..061e3a5cf34b51e5a6d179e23457e71adaacde60 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ There are plugin parameters to define how the plugin will behave:
 **force** (optional, defaults to False): If an object already exists whether it should be updated
 **cache** (optional, defaults to None): Fully qualified filename for a cache of der Server Density data
 **cleanup** (optional, defaults to False): Decides if undefined alerts in your Ansible inventory available at Server Density should be deleted
+**readonly** (optional, defaults to False): If set to True it will only read the current settings from SD and stores them in a temporary file and does nothing else. This is useful when you want to find out some variable names for alerts or similar things
 
 ##Installation##
 
diff --git a/action_plugins/serverdensity.py b/action_plugins/serverdensity.py
index a7f28039c20693f7bb4f62e4a4088948812740ef..3736351f3ac997b6b45ab4d54787eceeb0d4fa3e 100644
--- a/action_plugins/serverdensity.py
+++ b/action_plugins/serverdensity.py
@@ -44,11 +44,21 @@ class ActionModule(object):
         self.force_update = args.get('force', False)
         self.cache_file_name = args.get('cache', None)
         cleanup = args.get('cleanup', False)
+        just_download = args.get('readonly', False)
+
+        if just_download:
+          self.force_update = False
+          self.cache_file_name = os.tmpnam()
+          cleanup = False
 
         result = {}
 
         self.list_all()
 
+        if just_download:
+          vv('Downloaded settings to %s' % self.cache_file_name)
+          return
+
         services = {}
         devicegroup_alerts = {}
         servicegroup_alerts = {}