Alert Channels

Configure how and where you receive notifications.

Supported Channels

Email

Setup:

1. Dashboard → Alerts → Channels → Add Email
2. Enter email address
3. Verify (click link in email)

Features:

• Rich HTML formatting
• Inline charts
• Direct links to incidents
• Thread by incident

Slack

Setup:

1. Create Slack webhook: https://api.slack.com/messaging/webhooks
2. Dashboard → Alerts → Channels → Add Slack
3. Paste webhook URL
4. Test notification

Features:

• Interactive messages
• Acknowledge button
• Thread replies
• Custom channel routing

Telegram

Setup:

1. Create bot: https://t.me/BotFather
2. Get chat ID: Send message to bot, visit https://api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/getUpdates
3. Dashboard → Alerts → Channels → Add Telegram
4. Enter bot token and chat ID

Features:

• Instant mobile notifications
• Inline action buttons
• Group chat support

Discord

Setup:

1. Create webhook in Discord channel settings
2. Dashboard → Alerts → Channels → Add Discord
3. Paste webhook URL

Features:

• Embedded rich content
• Role mentions
• Thread support

Webhooks

Setup:

1. Dashboard → Alerts → Channels → Add Webhook
2. Enter URL
3. Configure headers (optional)
4. Test payload

Payload Example:

{
  "event": "monitor.down",
  "monitor": {
    "id": 123,
    "name": "api.example.com",
    "url": "https://api.example.com"
  },
  "incident": {
    "id": 456,
    "severity": "high",
    "started_at": "2024-01-15T10:30:00Z"
  }
}

SMS (Twilio)

Setup:

1. Dashboard → Alerts → Channels → Add SMS
2. Enter Twilio credentials
3. Add phone number

Quota: Limited per plan (check billing)

Voice Calls (Twilio)

Setup:

1. Dashboard → Alerts → Channels → Add Voice
2. Configure Twilio
3. Add phone number

Use case: Critical alerts only

Channel Configuration

Routing Rules

Send different alerts to different channels:

Monitor Down → Slack #incidents + Email
Anomaly Detected → Slack #monitoring  
Quota 80% → Email only
Quota Exceeded → Slack + SMS

Filtering

Filter by:

• Severity (critical, high, medium, low)
• Monitor group
• Time of day
• Alert type

Throttling

Prevent alert fatigue:

• Max 1 notification per 5 minutes (same incident)
• Max 10 notifications per hour (per channel)
• Escalation after N repeated alerts

Testing Channels

Dashboard → Alerts → Channels → [Channel] → Test

Sends sample notification to verify configuration.

Best Practices

✅ DO:

• Use multiple channels for redundancy
• Route by severity
• Test channels regularly
• Set up escalation policies

❌ DON'T:

• Send everything to one channel
• Ignore low-severity alerts (creates noise)
• Skip testing after configuration
• Use SMS for non-critical alerts (costs)

Next Steps

• Thresholds - Configure alert conditions
• Anomaly Detection - ML alerting
• Overview - Alert system basics