Your MetricsWatch Slack alerts now show a chart

A MetricsWatch alert in Slack tells you what moved: "Event count dropped 49%, 214 → 109". Until now it did not show you what the metric looked like before it moved. Was that a real break, or a metric that jumps around every day anyway? To find out, you had to sign in and open the alert.

Slack alerts now carry a chart of the metric's recent history, right in the message.

What the chart shows

• The alert's recent checks, up to and including the one that fired, drawn as a line: the last 15 for an alert that compares against an earlier period, the last 48 for an alert with a threshold.
• The latest value in large type, and the change the alert itself measured: against the same day last week, the 7-day average, the week before or 30 minutes ago, or how far past your threshold it is.
• For an alert that compares against an earlier period, the stretch from that period to the latest check highlighted, with a dashed line at the value it was compared with and the earlier checks dimmed.
• The check that fired, marked with a dot at the end of the line.
• Your threshold as a line across the chart, for alerts that fire when a metric goes above or falls below a number.
• The time of the first and last check, in your alert's time zone.

If a metric has not changed at all across those checks, the chart says so in words, so a flat line reads as "nothing moved" rather than as a broken chart.

Try it

You need a Slack workspace connected to MetricsWatch Alerts and an alert that has run at least three times.

1. Sign in at alerts.metrics.watch. If Slack is not connected yet, connect it from your account settings.
2. Open an alert that has been running for a while and edit it.
3. Under "Slack Channels & Users", add a channel or a person, then save.
4. Click "Send Test Notification".

The test message arrives in Slack marked as a test, with the chart of that alert's real recent checks. The made-up value a test uses to fire is not drawn on the chart.

Good to know

• The chart is built from checks MetricsWatch has already run. It makes no extra requests to your analytics account.
• Checks that errored are left out of the chart.
• An alert with fewer than three checks behind it is sent without a chart.
• If the chart cannot be drawn for any reason, the alert still goes out, just without it.
• Email alerts and the message you get when a metric recovers do not include the chart.
• Slack delivery is part of the Starter and Professional plans.

Not using MetricsWatch Alerts yet? See the plans and start a free trial. No credit card needed.