Channels

Channels control where Dregs sends your notifications. When an alert rule fires, Dregs delivers notifications through every channel assigned to that rule — whether that's the dashboard, an email inbox, a Slack room, or a webhook endpoint in your application.

What Are Channels

A channel is a delivery mechanism for notifications. Each channel has a type (how it delivers) and configuration (where it delivers). You can create as many channels as you need and assign them to different alert rules — a critical alert might notify Slack and trigger a webhook, while a low-severity one might only appear in the dashboard.

Create and manage channels from the Settings page under the Alerts section, or through the REST API.

Channel Types

Dashboard

The dashboard channel is always on and implicit. Every alert appears in the Dregs dashboard automatically, regardless of what other channels you configure. You don't need to create a dashboard channel — it exists by default.

Even if every external channel is misconfigured or down, you can still see your alerts in the dashboard.

Email

Sends alert notifications to one or more email addresses. Useful for teams that want alerts in their inbox alongside other operational notifications.

Slack

Posts alert notifications directly to a Slack channel. Configure it with your Slack webhook URL, and alerts will appear in the channel of your choice within seconds.

Webhook

Sends HTTP POST requests to a URL you specify when subscribed events occur. This is the path to full automation, with your application receiving structured JSON payloads and reacting programmatically. Webhooks are the most powerful channel type and you can read about them in the Webhooks section.

Assigning Channels to Alert Rules

Each alert rule specifies which channels should be notified when it fires. You can assign any combination of channels to a rule. Common patterns include:

• Dashboard only — for low-severity informational alerts that don't need immediate attention. The team reviews them during regular triage.
• Dashboard + Slack — for warnings that should be seen promptly. The Slack notification gets eyes on it fast; the dashboard provides the full context for investigation.
• Dashboard + Slack + webhook — for critical alerts that need both human awareness and automated response. Slack alerts the team while the webhook triggers immediate defensive action in your application.

Test Deliveries

Before relying on a channel in production, you can send a test delivery to verify your integration. The test delivery uses the same format as real deliveries, so if your endpoint handles the test correctly, it will handle real notifications too. Send test deliveries from the channel detail view in Settings or via the API.

Delivery Tracking

Every notification sent to an external channel (email, Slack, webhook) is logged as a delivery record with full detail: delivery status (pending, delivered, or failed), HTTP status code, payload size, error message if applicable, and the attempt number.

You can view delivery history for any channel in Settings. This makes debugging integration issues straightforward — you can see exactly what Dregs sent and exactly what the receiving system responded.