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First Time Setup

What to configure first after creating your Upstat account and launching your initial project.

Once you complete onboarding, you’ll land directly in your initial project. From here, you can start monitoring your systems, preparing for incidents, and inviting your team. This guide walks you through the essential setup steps to get your environment ready.

1. Configure Your Project Details

Open Project Settings to review and customize:

  • Project Name – Update the default name to something more meaningful (e.g., Web Infrastructure, Payments Service)
  • Project Alias – This short identifier appears in incident labels and status references (e.g., WEB, PAY)
  • Project Color & Icon – Optional visual cues that help distinguish this project if you’re managing multiple

You can return to project settings anytime to make changes.

![Placeholder: Project Settings Screenshot]

2. Set Up Your First Monitors

Monitors are the core of Upstat’s detection engine. They track the health and responsiveness of your services.

To create your first monitor:

  1. Click New Monitor
  2. Choose a monitor type:
    • HTTP/HTTPS
    • API Endpoint
    • SSL Certificate
    • (Heartbeat coming soon)
  3. Provide the endpoint or hostname
  4. Choose regions and response expectations
  5. Set check intervals and thresholds
  6. Save the monitor

Each monitor runs independently and can alert you based on failure conditions or performance degradation.

You can view monitors in both List View and Kanban View, and filter them by status, tag, or project alias.

![Placeholder: Monitor Creation Screenshot]

3. Create an On-Call Schedule

If you plan to use Upstat for incident alerting, you’ll need an on-call schedule in place.

To configure your first schedule:

  1. Go to the On-Call section
  2. Create a new roster (e.g., Primary Rotation)
  3. Select the coverage timezone
  4. Define daily or weekly shifts
  5. Assign users to shifts
  6. Save the roster

You can use overrides, repeat rules, and view your rotation in a timeline calendar format.

You must assign team members before adding them to a roster.

![Placeholder: On-Call Schedule Setup Screenshot]

4. Set Up Notification Rules

To ensure the right people are alerted at the right time:

  • Open Notifications Settings for Monitors and Incidents
  • Define rules for events like:
    • Incident declared
    • Monitor status: down, partial, or recovered
    • User acknowledgment or status changes
  • Choose notification channels (Slack, email, more coming soon)

Notifications can be routed based on incident severity, service tag, or custom labels.

![Placeholder: Notification Rule Setup Screenshot]

5. Invite Your Team

Bring collaborators into your account:

  1. Open Account Settings → Team
  2. Click Invite Member
  3. Enter email and select account role
  4. Send invite

After they accept, you can add them to specific projects and assign project roles.

Each user occupies a seat on your subscription plan.

![Placeholder: Team Invite Screenshot]

6. Customize Incident Setup

Upstat supports flexible incident management. Recommended initial setup:

  • Labels – Add common tags for filtering (e.g., Network, DB, Critical Path)
  • Statuses – Customize lifecycle stages like Identified, Investigating, Resolved, etc.
  • Templates – Preconfigure incident descriptions (post-MVP)

You can also predefine incident roles (e.g., Lead, Comms, Legal) and assign them during live incidents.

![Placeholder: Incident Label Setup Screenshot]

Summary

Your environment is now ready for real-world monitoring and incident response.

Recommended next steps:

  • Start triggering test monitors to verify alerting
  • Review incident creation flow and try declaring a test incident
  • Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) in your user profile

Upstat is built to scale with your needs—whether you’re a lean startup or a growing platform team.

Learn more