Slack alerts

Connect WatchCat to your Slack workspace to receive instant alerts when monitors fail or recover.

WatchCat uses a two-layer model for alerts: integrations define where to send notifications (e.g. a Slack webhook), and notification channels bundle one or more integrations together with optional email recipients. Monitors are then assigned notification channels — not integrations directly. How notification channels work →

Setting up Slack alerts takes three steps: create a Slack integration, add it to a notification channel, and assign that channel to your monitors.

Data note: Slack is a US-based service. When WatchCat sends a Slack alert, the alert message passes through Slack's infrastructure outside the EU. See the subprocessors page for details.

Step 1 — create a Slack incoming webhook

Slack alerts use an incoming webhook URL. To create one:

1 Go to api.slack.com/apps and create a new app, or open an existing one.
2 Under Features, select Incoming Webhooks and toggle it on.
3 Click Add New Webhook to Workspace and select the channel where alerts should appear.
4 Copy the webhook URL — it starts with https://hooks.slack.com/services/…

Step 2 — add a Slack integration in WatchCat

1 Go to Integrations → New integration and select Slack.
2 Paste the webhook URL and give the integration a name (e.g. "Slack #incidents").
3 Save the integration. From the integration page, click Send test alert to confirm the message arrives in Slack.

Step 3 — add the integration to a notification channel

Integrations are delivered through notification channels. A channel can combine email recipients and one or more integrations, so you can define exactly who and what gets notified for a given set of monitors.

1 Go to Notification channels → New channel (or edit an existing one).
2 Under Integrations, check the Slack integration you just created.
3 Save the channel.

Step 4 — assign the channel to monitors

Open any monitor and edit it. Under Notifications, check the notification channel you just set up. Alerts for that monitor will now be sent to your Slack channel whenever it goes down or recovers.

Tip: Enable Auto-assign to new monitors on the channel to have it preselected whenever you create a new monitor — useful for a shared team-wide alert channel.

When alerts fire

WatchCat sends a Slack message in two situations:

Monitor goes down

Sent after the configured number of consecutive failures. Includes the monitor name, first failure time, and a link to the incident.

Monitor recovers

Sent when checks start passing again. Includes total downtime duration so the team has immediate context.

Pausing alerts

You can pause a notification channel without removing it from your monitors — useful during planned maintenance when you want to suppress alerts temporarily. Go to Notification channels, find the channel, and click Pause. Alerts resume automatically when you unpause.

Pausing a channel affects all integrations and email recipients in that channel. To silence only Slack while keeping email alerts active, put the Slack integration in a separate channel.

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