Notifications

Alerts go to notification channels: an email list, a Slack channel or a Microsoft Teams channel. You set the channels up once in Settings → Notifications, then choose which ones each server and each uptime monitor uses. Every channel gets the same alert.

What you start with

Every team starts with one channel, Owner email, which emails the workspace owner. It is a default channel, so every server and monitor alerts the owner until you change anything.

A default channel is used by every server and uptime monitor whose channels nobody picked by hand, including new ones. You can have several default channels, or none.

Add a channel

1. Open Settings → Notifications and click Add channel.
2. Pick the type: Email, Slack or Teams.
3. Give it a name you'll recognise, such as Slack #client-a-alerts.
4. Fill in the details:
   • Email: up to 5 addresses in To and 5 in CC, separated by commas.
   • Slack or Teams: paste the webhook URL. How to get one is below, and in the form itself.
5. Tick Default channel if new servers and monitors should use it.
6. Click Add channel, then Send test to check it works.

You can have up to 10 channels. Only Owners and Admins can add, edit, test or delete them. Everyone else can see the list.

Get a Slack webhook URL

1. Open api.slack.com/apps and click Create New App → From scratch. Name it (for example DevOps alerts) and pick your Slack workspace.
2. In the app's left menu, open Incoming Webhooks and switch Activate Incoming Webhooks on.
3. Click Add New Webhook to Workspace, choose the channel the alerts should go to, and click Allow.
4. Copy the Webhook URL (it starts with https://hooks.slack.com/services/) and paste it into the form.

One webhook posts to one Slack channel. For a second Slack channel, add a second webhook and a second notification channel. If you can't create Slack apps, ask a Slack admin to do these steps and send you the URL.

Get a Microsoft Teams workflow URL

1. In Teams, go to the channel the alerts should go to. Click ••• (More options) next to its name and choose Workflows.
2. Pick the template Send webhook alerts to a channel (or Post to a channel when a webhook request is received).
3. Name it, check the Team and Channel, and click Add workflow.
4. Copy the URL Teams shows and paste it into the form. You can find it again later in the workflow's first step, When a Teams webhook request is received.

Alerts arrive as cards posted by the Workflows app. Old Incoming Webhook connector URLs (ending in webhook.office.com) don't work any more: Microsoft retired them, so create a workflow instead.

Keep webhook URLs private. Anyone who has one can post to that channel. After you save a URL, the page only shows a shortened version. To change it, edit the channel and paste a new one.

Choose where a server's alerts go

On Servers, each server has a bell button. Click it to open Alert notifications:

• Use the default channels: the server follows whatever is marked default in Settings.
• Choose channels: tick one or more channels, for example the client's own Slack plus your team's email.

The server's alerts are its monitoring agent's CPU, memory, disk and swap alerts (see Monitor), and failed daily backups of the databases on it.

If a server's alerts go nowhere, Servers shows No alert configured in red. Click it to choose a channel.

Choose where a website's alerts go

In Uptime, open a monitor's Edit form. Under Alert notifications, choose Use the default channels or Choose channels. The monitor's alerts are the DOWN alert, the root cause that follows, and the SSL expiry reminders. See Uptime.

The list shows Default alerts, the number of channels, or No alert configured in red.

When a channel stops working

Each channel shows when it last delivered an alert, or the last error. After 3 failed alerts in a row it's marked Broken. For a broken Slack or Teams channel, the workspace owner also gets one email about it.

Common reasons:

The first alert that gets through, or saving a new URL or address list, clears Broken.

Deleting a channel

Servers and monitors that picked the channel stop sending to it. Any left with no channel show No alert configured. If it was a default channel, everything that follows the defaults stops sending to it too.