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 > Global 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 - The name of the Slack channel from the user's Slack workspace
  • Display emojis - A switch to enable or disable emoji rendering in alert messages

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

When you configure the Slack alert channel, the Display emojis switch controls whether Slack messages display emojis. For example, if you set Display emojis to No, you see the text :wink:, but if you set it to Yes, you see the 😉 emoji. You can turn off this option to avoid conflicts with custom payloads that use the custom:<key>: <value> format. If your key name matches an emoji name (for example, pod), the key that is rendered as an emoji in Slack messages can be difficult to read.