Slack alert channel

To send alert notifications from Instana to Slack in real time, create a Slack alert channel shown on this page.

Creating a Slack alert channel

To create a Slack alert channel in Instana, click Settings > Team Settings > Events & Alerts > Alert Channels > Add Alert Channel in the Instana UI.

  • Name - Name of the Alert Channel in Instana
  • Webhook URL - Webhook URL generated from user's Slack application (see next section for instructions)
  • Icon URL - URL of Icon user choses to show when message is received
  • Channel Name - Slack channel name from user's Slack workspace

slack alert channel

Generating Slack Webhook URL

To receive Instana alerts in Slack, you need to create a Slack webhook URL. The Slack webhook URL acts as a bridge between Instana and Slack, allowing alerts to be sent directly to a chosen Slack channel. You can create this URL through the Slack web interface or the Slack app for ease of use.

You can generate a Slack webhook URL for Instana alerts to arrive to the specific channel (that is, #test-channel-1) by using one of the following options:

  1. Personalized Slack app:
    • Personalized Slack app is the "modern" approach where you create your own Slack app within your workspace. During the setup, enable the Incoming Webhooks feature. This method offers more flexibility and control over the webhook settings.
  2. Incoming Webhooks App (Legacy Built-In App):

Personalized Slack app

Create your own customized Slack app and enable the Incoming Webhooks feature by completing the following steps. After the app is created, the incoming webhooks must be connected.

  1. Under the channel's settings, enable incoming webhooks, a Slack extension
  2. Create an incoming webhook. Pick the channel to send the alert to.
  3. Copy the URL.
  • Use the Incoming Webhooks app (Legacy)

Creating your own Slack app

To create your own Slack app, complete the following steps, starting off by going to the Slack app directory.

  1. Click on the Create App button and choose from scratch.

    Create App

  2. Enable the Incoming Webhooks feature in this app.

    Enable webhooks

  3. Select the appropriate Slack workspace from the dropdown menu.

    Select workspace

  4. You can see that a webhook link is generated for a specific channel. Copy this link and insert it to the corresponding Instana Slack alert channel.

    Webhook URL link

For more information, see Create your own Slack app.

Incoming Webhooks app

  1. Click Browse apps > Custom Integrations > Incoming Webhooks. See the Slack app section for more details.
  2. If the Slack webhook URL is not specified, the Slack integration posts to the channel that is configured on the Slack side, and you can override the channel and user icon by configuring it on the Instana side.

Incoming Webhooks

Alerting examples

After you create the alert channel, alerts for the following events are received as an HTTP POST to the configured Slack Webhook URL (HTTP or HTTPS), the address which the alerts will be sent to.

See the following examples:

On open issues or incidents

garbage collection

On close issues or incidents

garbage collection 2

Emoji rendering

In the Slack alert messages, the rendering of emoji is disabled. For example, you can see :wink: instead of the actual 😉 emoji. This update prevents interference with custom payloads that use the custom:<key>: <value> format. If you use an emoji name (for example, pod) for your key, then the key name that is rendered as an emoji in Slack messages is difficult to read.