Using Slack with Better Stack

This integration allows you to receive incidents directly in Slack.

The incident message includes information about the monitor, as well as the options to acknowledge the incident or to view more details in Better Stack.

For every incident, Better Stack can create a dedicated Slack channel and invite the responders, start a thread in your incidents channel, or post a message there. Learn more about Slack incident workflows.

Connecting Slack with Better Stack

1. Go to Integrations.
2. Find the Slack card.
3. Click Add.
4. You will get redirected to Slack.
5. Select the channel for incident messages, for example #incidents. To use a new channel, create it in Slack first.
6. Click Allow.

Now all new incidents will automatically be posted into this Slack channel.

Turn off metadata in Slack messages

Slack incident messages include the incident's metadata. If metadata-heavy incidents, such as some cloud provider alerts, make the messages too long, open the Slack integration settings and turn off Post incident metadata. It's on by default.

Creating advanced Slack alerting rules

To post incidents into multiple Slack channels, or to only post incidents from a specific monitor, we need to create a dedicated escalation policy:

1. Go to escalation policy and click Create escalation policy.
2. Name your escalation policy, for example: "Slack only".
3. In the Who should we alert? section, pick the Slack channel you want to post incidents to.
4. If you want to send other notifications, like e-mail, too, you can configure the How should we notify selected colleagues? section as well.
5. Once ready, click Create escalation policy.
6. Now go to the desired monitor and click advanced escalation policy.
7. Pick your new escalation policy and click Save changes.
8. That's it, nice job!

Connecting to a private Slack channel

You can select both public and private channels when creating a new Slack integration:

To allow the integration to write to your private channel, mention @Better Stack in the channel to invite our bot, or type /invite @Better Stack.

Now you can click Send test alert in Better Stack to test the connection:

Tag the person on call in Slack

Mention one handle, like @primary-on-call, to tag whoever is on call right now. Better Stack keeps a Slack user group in sync with your on-call schedule. See Tag the person on call in Slack.

Request cover for your on-call shift

Can't take your shift? Type /cover in any channel to ask your colleagues to cover it. The form opens on your next shift.

Colleagues whose Slack account is linked to Better Stack get a direct message to Accept or Decline. Learn more about requesting cover.