Alerts can be used to notify recipients about status changes to your checks. They can be sent by email address, SMS messages, or integrated 3rd party service.

Here’s an example of some configured recipients, some of which are disabled:
Alerts configured for a browser check, all enabled:

Note: The alerts are all enabled, but since most of the targets are disabled, alerts will be triggered but not sent for these.

Apica’s alerting requires that the monitoring checks be defined, the thresholds and conditions for an alert set, and a destination where this information will ultimately end.

This section introduces the concept of alerting using a push concept, with Webhooks defining where the alerts' POST body gets sent. The contents of the alert messages are populated with placeholders that convey the actual values needed by either the Webhook-enabled service, the SMS text, or the email.

Alerts
- Are fired/triggered when a threshold has been passed, or a condition has been met.
- Have Targets (places to send the alert to)
Targets
- Can be directly sent to a person/group
  - Email
  - SMS
- It can be a Webhook-enabled service like OpsGenie or Splunk
  - Push style to the service ingestion endpoint
  - Not a REST-API Pull model
Placeholders
- Messages: The messages these alerts create can contain information/metric Message Placeholders filled in during message generation.
- For Webhooks: WebHook Placeholders are what the service needs to route the incoming alert message correctly. These placeholders can be customized for the service to be integrated.

The Alert Setup Process

From the Manage Alerts view, you can assign individual or group alerts for each check, which will notify them of any status change according to the preferred severity.

Screenshots

In Manage Alerts, checks are displayed by Top Level Group and Subgroup, much as they appear in Manage checks, but with an icon along the right side with which Alerts can be assigned.

In the upper right, you can toggle between Alerts and Recipients.

Workflow

The general workflow for creating alerts is:

Create or Add a User to receive the alerts (Who gets the alert?).
Create Targets for the recipients' delivery method (How are the alerts delivered? e.g., PagerDuty, SMS Text, Email, etc.).
(Optional) Create a Group containing multiple recipients for the alert.
Create the Alerts themselves by selecting checks and assigning recipients.

Step	Screenshot
Add Recipients The Users and Groups you set to receive Alerts are set up in the Recipients tab. There is a column to define Users and their contact information, as well as Groups.
First Step: Add a User Recipients are the users or groups of users you select to receive the alerts. Click the Add User button. Enter the necessary user information: User Name User Description User Phone Number (doubles as Target) User Email (doubles as a Target) Click the Create User button. The user is created, containing the two default targets.
Second Step: Add Group Recipient groups are collections of user targets you select to receive the alerts. Note: You need to create the users and targets before you can add them to a group. Create Group To add a recipient group: Click the Add Group button. Enter a name for the group Find the Users you want to include in the group. Click the checkbox next to each Target. Click Create Group The group is created, containing the selected user/targets.
Targets When defining alert recipients, you can have the message delivered via various target services. For each User or Group Recipient, you add delivery Targets that define the method of delivery. User You can select to add PagerDuty, Email, a WebHook integration, or SMS (text message) as targets. Groups When you have defined targets for individual users, you can add them to Groups:
Alerts Tab The Alerts tab allows you to set Severity, Targets (individual users), and Groups (of users) to review alerts according to the parameters you prefer. Alerts can be set for individual checks and be delivered to multiple Targets.
Add Alert You can add alerts for any checks and select one or several severities to include in the alert. Each alert can have multiple Recipients, and each recipient can have multiple Targets. Create Alert To add an alert: Find the checks you want to create alerts for Search for checks with the Filter search by OR: Expand the Monitor Groups as needed Mark the Checks you want to include in the alert: Mark the levels of Severity you want to send alerts for Mark the users or groups your want to send alerts to Click the Create Alert button.

Configuring Different Alerting Types

E-mail Alerts

A standard way of delivering notifications is sending an email. You can send the alert to multiple email addresses, and optionally have a customized message containing Message Placeholders.

An email target is created automatically when you set up a Add User.

Add an E-mail Target

To add an Email target:

Click the Email button

Enter a Target Name for identification in Synthetic Monitoring

Enter a list of Email addresses to sent the alert to

If you want to use a custom message:
Uncheck Use Default Message
Enter an alert Message (you can use Message Placeholders)

Click the Add Email Target button

The Target is created, containing the selected user/targets.

SMS Alerts

Alerts can be delivered as SMS to mobile phones. You can send the alert to multiple numbers, and optionally have a customized message containing Message Placeholders.