---
weight: 4
title: Alerting
---

Flagger can be configured to send alerts to various chat platforms.
You can define a global alert provider at install time or configure alerts on a per canary basis.

## Global configuration

### Slack

#### Slack Configuration

Flagger requires a custom webhook integration from slack, instead of the new slack app system.

The webhook can be generated by following the [legacy slack documentation](https://api.slack.com/legacy/custom-integrations/messaging/webhooks)

#### Flagger configuration

Once the webhook has been generated. Flagger can be configured to send Slack notifications:

```bash
helm upgrade -i flagger flagger/flagger \
--set slack.url=https://hooks.slack.com/services/YOUR/SLACK/WEBHOOK \
--set slack.proxy=my-http-proxy.com \ # optional http/s proxy
--set slack.channel=some-channel-name \
--set slack.user=flagger \
--set clusterName=my-cluster
```

Once configured with a Slack incoming **webhook**,
Flagger will post messages when a canary deployment has been initialised,
when a new revision has been detected and if the canary analysis failed or succeeded.

![Slack Notifications](/img/screens/slack-canary-notifications.png)

A canary deployment will be rolled back if the progress deadline exceeded
or if the analysis reached the maximum number of failed checks:

![Slack Notifications](/img/screens/slack-canary-failed.png)

### Microsoft Teams

Flagger can be configured to send notifications to Microsoft Teams:

```bash
helm upgrade -i flagger flagger/flagger \
--set msteams.url=https://outlook.office.com/webhook/YOUR/TEAMS/WEBHOOK \
--set msteams.proxy-url=my-http-proxy.com # optional http/s proxy
```

Similar to Slack, Flagger alerts on canary analysis events:

![MS Teams Notifications](/img/screens/flagger-ms-teams-notifications.png)

![MS Teams Notifications](/img/screens/flagger-ms-teams-failed.png)

## Canary configuration

Configuring alerting globally has several limitations as it's not possible to specify different channels
or configure the verbosity on a per canary basis. To make the alerting move flexible,
the canary analysis can be extended with a list of alerts that reference an alert provider.
For each alert, users can configure the severity level. The alerts section overrides the global setting.

Slack example:

```yaml
apiVersion: flagger.app/v1beta1
kind: AlertProvider
metadata:
  name: on-call
  namespace: flagger
spec:
  type: slack
  channel: on-call-alerts
  username: flagger
  # webhook address (ignored if secretRef is specified)
  address: https://hooks.slack.com/services/YOUR/SLACK/WEBHOOK
  # optional http/s proxy
  proxy: http://my-http-proxy.com
  # secret containing the webhook address (optional)
  secretRef:
    name: on-call-url
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: on-call-url
  namespace: flagger
data:
  address: <encoded-url>
  token: <encoded-slack-bot-token>
```

The alert provider **type** can be: `slack`, `msteams`, `rocket` or `discord`. When set to `discord`,
Flagger will use [Slack formatting](https://birdie0.github.io/discord-webhooks-guide/other/slack_formatting.html)
and will append `/slack` to the Discord address.

For using a **Slack bot token**, you have to add the `token` to the Kubernetes secret referred in `secretRef`.

When not specified, **channel** defaults to `general` and **username** defaults to `flagger`.

When **secretRef** is specified, the Kubernetes secret must contain a data field named `address`,
the address in the secret will take precedence over the **address** field in the provider spec.

The canary analysis can have a list of alerts, each alert referencing an alert provider:

```yaml
  analysis:
    alerts:
      - name: "on-call Slack"
        severity: error
        providerRef:
          name: on-call
          namespace: flagger
      - name: "qa Discord"
        severity: warn
        providerRef:
          name: qa-discord
      - name: "dev MS Teams"
        severity: info
        providerRef:
          name: dev-msteams
```

Alert fields:

* **name** \(required\)
* **severity** levels: `info`, `warn`, `error` (default info)
* **providerRef.name** alert provider name (required)
* **providerRef.namespace** alert provider namespace (defaults to the canary namespace)

When the severity is set to `warn`, Flagger will alert when waiting on manual confirmation or if the analysis fails.
When the severity is set to `error`, Flagger will alert only if the canary analysis fails.

To differentiate alerts based on the cluster name, you can configure Flagger with the `-cluster-name=my-cluster`
command flag, or with Helm `--set clusterName=my-cluster`.

## Prometheus Alert Manager

You can use Alertmanager to trigger alerts when a canary deployment failed:

```yaml
  - alert: canary_rollback
    expr: flagger_canary_status > 1
    for: 1m
    labels:
      severity: warning
    annotations:
      summary: "Canary failed"
      description: "Workload {{ $labels.name }} namespace {{ $labels.namespace }}"
```
