Alert Channels

Pingara delivers notifications through multiple channels so your team gets alerts wherever they work — email, chat, or on-call systems.

Available Channels

Email

Email is the default notification channel included with every Pingara account.

Setup

1. Go to Settings → Alert Policies → [Your Policy]
2. Click Add Channel
3. Select Email
4. Enter the recipient email address
5. Save

Configuration Options

• Recipient: Any valid email address
• Multiple recipients: Add separate email channels for each address

What You Receive

Down alert email:

Subject: 🔴 [Pingara] Monitor Down: api.example.com

Your monitor "api.example.com" is DOWN.

Status: Investigating
Error: HTTP 503 Service Unavailable
Region: US East (N. Virginia)
Started: 2024-01-15 14:32 UTC

View incident: https://app.pingara.com/incidents/abc123

Recovery email:

Subject: 🟢 [Pingara] Monitor Recovered: api.example.com

Your monitor "api.example.com" has RECOVERED.

Duration: 12 minutes
Resolved: 2024-01-15 14:44 UTC

Tip: Use a shared team inbox or mailing list (e.g., alerts@yourcompany.com) so the whole team has visibility.

Slack

Real-time alerts delivered directly to your Slack channels.

Setup

1. Create an Incoming Webhook in your Slack workspace:
   • Go to Slack App Directory
   • Create a new app → Incoming Webhooks → Enable
   • Click Add New Webhook to Workspace
   • Select the target channel (e.g., #monitoring-alerts)
   • Copy the webhook URL
2. In Pingara, go to Settings → Alert Policies → [Your Policy]
3. Click Add Channel → Slack
4. Paste the webhook URL
5. Save

Rich Message Format

Pingara sends formatted Slack messages with:

• Color-coded sidebar (red for down, green for recovery)
• Monitor name and URL
• Error details and affected region
• Direct link to the incident in Pingara
• Timestamp

Best Practices

• Create a dedicated #monitoring-alerts channel
• Set up Slack notification preferences so you don't miss critical alerts
• Use separate channels for production vs staging alerts

For detailed setup instructions, see Slack Integration.

Microsoft Teams

Setup

1. In your Teams channel, click ⋯ → Connectors → Incoming Webhook
2. Name the connector "Pingara Alerts"
3. Copy the webhook URL
4. In Pingara, add a Teams channel with the webhook URL
5. Save

Message Format

Teams notifications include:

• Adaptive card with monitor status
• Color-coded status indicator
• Direct link to incident details
• Region and error information

Discord

Setup

1. In your Discord server, go to Channel Settings → Integrations → Webhooks
2. Click New Webhook
3. Name it "Pingara" and select the target channel
4. Copy the webhook URL
5. In Pingara, add a Discord channel with the webhook URL
6. Save

Message Format

Discord messages use embeds with:

• Color-coded sidebar
• Monitor name and status
• Error details in structured fields
• Timestamp footer

Webhooks

Custom webhooks let you integrate Pingara with any system that accepts HTTP requests.

Setup

1. In Pingara, add a Webhook channel
2. Enter your endpoint URL
3. Optionally add authentication headers
4. Save

Payload Format

Pingara sends a POST request with a JSON body:

{
  "event": "incident.created",
  "monitor": {
    "id": "abc123",
    "name": "api.example.com",
    "url": "https://api.example.com/health"
  },
  "incident": {
    "id": "inc_456",
    "status": "investigating",
    "startedAt": "2024-01-15T14:32:00Z",
    "errorType": "timeout",
    "errorMessage": "Connection timeout after 30000ms",
    "affectedRegions": ["us-east-1"]
  },
  "timestamp": "2024-01-15T14:32:05Z"
}

Event Types

For detailed payload documentation, see Webhook Integration.

PagerDuty

Setup

1. In PagerDuty, create a new Service or use an existing one
2. Add a Pingara integration (or use the Events API v2)
3. Copy the Integration Key (routing key)
4. In Pingara, add a PagerDuty channel with the integration key
5. Save

How It Works

• Incident created → PagerDuty alert triggered (follows your escalation policy)
• Incident resolved → PagerDuty alert auto-resolved
• Deduplication — Pingara uses the incident ID as the dedup key to prevent duplicate pages

Best Practices

• Map Pingara severity to PagerDuty urgency levels
• Use PagerDuty's on-call schedules for after-hours rotation
• Configure PagerDuty escalation rules as a secondary layer to Pingara's own escalation

Managing Channels

Enable / Disable

Toggle a channel on or off without deleting it. Useful for temporary silencing during maintenance.

Testing

After adding a channel, send a test notification to verify delivery:

1. Go to the channel settings
2. Click Send Test
3. Verify the message arrives

Multiple Channels

You can add multiple channels to a single alert policy. All enabled channels receive notifications simultaneously.

Example setup:

Production Alert Policy:
  ├── Email → ops-team@company.com
  ├── Slack → #prod-alerts
  └── PagerDuty → Production Service

Staging Alert Policy:
  └── Slack → #staging-alerts

Troubleshooting

Notifications Not Arriving

1. Check channel is enabled — Disabled channels are silently skipped
2. Verify webhook URL — Ensure it's correct and the destination service is running
3. Check alert policy — Is the trigger enabled? (Down, Recovery, etc.)
4. Check monitor linkage — Is the alert policy linked to the monitor?
5. Check spam folder — Email notifications may be caught by spam filters

Duplicate Notifications

• Ensure you don't have the same channel added to multiple overlapping policies
• Check that repeat notification settings aren't too aggressive

Next Steps

• Setting Up Alerts — Create and configure alert policies
• Slack Integration — Detailed Slack setup guide
• Webhook Integration — Custom webhook payloads