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Slack Integration

Connect your Slack workspace to receive notifications and manage incidents without leaving Slack.

Setting Up Slack

  1. Go to Settings → Integrations
  2. Click Connect next to Slack
  3. Authorize Upstat in your Slack workspace
  4. Choose your default notification channel

Once connected:

  • Receive notifications in channels or DMs
  • Create incidents with /incident
  • Update incident status from Slack messages

Slash Commands

Creating Incidents

Quickly create incidents without leaving Slack:

/incident Website is down - users getting 503 errors

This will:

  1. Create a new incident
  2. Set you as the incident lead
  3. Create a dedicated incident channel
  4. Post initial details
  5. Notify on-call team

Additional Commands

Check system status: /upstat status

See who’s on-call: /oncall

Or for specific team: /oncall backend

Get help: /upstat help

Working with Incidents in Slack

Incident Notifications

When incidents occur, you’ll receive notifications with:

  • Incident details and severity
  • Action buttons to acknowledge or update status
  • Link to view full incident

Using Commands

Create an incident:

/incident Website is down

Check who’s on-call:

/oncall

Configuring Notifications

Channel Selection

Choose where different notifications go:

  1. Go to Settings → Notifications
  2. Configure channels for:
    • Incidents: New incidents and major updates
    • Critical Alerts: Monitor down, SSL expiring
    • Maintenance: Planned maintenance notifications
    • Daily Summary: System health overview

Personal Notifications

Get DMs for notifications relevant to you:

  1. Go to Profile → Notification Preferences
  2. Enable “Slack Direct Messages”
  3. Choose what to receive:
    • Incidents assigned to you
    • On-call notifications
    • @mentions in incidents

Notification Types

Critical Alerts

  • Service down for 5+ minutes
  • SSL certificate expiring
  • Multiple monitors failing

Format:

CRITICAL: Production API Down
Duration: 5 minutes
Region: US-East
Affected: Payment Service, Checkout
[View Details] [Create Incident]

Incident Notifications

  • New incidents
  • Status changes
  • Assignment changes
  • Resolution

On-Call Notifications

  • Shift starting reminder
  • Handoff notifications
  • Coverage gaps

Notification Features

Anti-Fatigue

Upstat helps reduce notification overload:

  • Duplicate alerts suppressed
  • Similar alerts grouped
  • Rate limiting per channel
  • Quiet hours respected (except critical)

Context from Catalog

Notifications include context when available:

  • Affected services
  • Dependencies
  • Related runbooks
  • Historical incidents

Runbook Suggestions

When configured, Upstat can suggest:

  • Relevant runbooks
  • Similar past incidents
  • Team members who resolved similar issues

Configuration

Channel Selection

Choose where notifications go:

  • Different channels for different severity levels
  • Personal DMs for incidents assigned to you
  • Team channels for group notifications

Troubleshooting

Not receiving notifications?

  • Check Slack is connected in Integrations
  • Verify channel permissions
  • Check notification preferences
  • Ensure you’re in configured channels

Too many notifications?

  • Adjust severity thresholds
  • Enable batching for non-critical
  • Use separate channels by team/severity
  • Configure quiet hours

/incident not working?

  • Reconnect Slack integration
  • Check you have permission to create incidents
  • Try with more detail: /incident SEV-2 Database connection timeouts