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Notifications

Watchbell can send alerts to Telegram, to a Discord channel and as a daily email. All three are free and optional, and they are set up on Alerts › Notifications (owner only; everyone else sees their status).

What gets sent

  • Telegram and Discord: one message per collector run, listing every alert that opened, is still firing (repeated every 6 hours) or resolved. Auto-action proposals and results also go to Telegram (see Auto-actions).
  • Email digest: one email a day at 07:00 in your time zone: what fired, what resolved, uptime and stored errors of the last 24 hours.

Each channel has Send test, and a switch to turn it off without forgetting its settings. If a send fails, the reason shows under the channel.

Telegram

  1. In Telegram, talk to @BotFather, send /newbot and follow the questions. It gives you a bot token like 123456789:AA….

  2. Put the token in app/.env and restart Watchbell:

    TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=123456789:AA...

  3. Open your new bot in Telegram and send it /start. For a group, add the bot to the group and send a message there.

  4. In Watchbell: Alerts › Notifications › Telegram bot › Connect, press Find chats, pick the chat and save.

  5. Press Send test.

Keep the token secret: anyone with it can send messages as your bot.

Approval buttons

With approval buttons on, proposal messages get Approve and Reject buttons, so you can say yes to a fix from your phone. Only your linked Telegram account can use them, and risky actions ask twice.

  1. On the Telegram channel, under Approval buttons, press Turn on.
  2. Press Show link code and send /link <code> in the connected chat within 10 minutes. The code works once.

How the buttons reach a laptop

Telegram normally delivers button presses to a public HTTPS address (a webhook). A laptop has none, so a self-hosted Watchbell asks Telegram for new updates itself (polling) every few seconds while the approval buttons are on. You don't need a public address, a tunnel or any extra account.

Things to know:

  • Buttons only work while Watchbell runs. Presses made while it is stopped or the laptop sleeps are held by Telegram (for up to 24 hours) and handled when Watchbell is back.
  • Turning the buttons on removes any webhook the bot had. Use one bot per Watchbell: if the same bot is used by another install that relies on a webhook, the two will take each other's updates. When Watchbell finds a webhook it didn't set, it leaves it alone and logs "Telegram has a webhook set; turn approvals on in Alerts → Notifications to switch this install to polling".
  • While the buttons are on, Telegram hands every message to Watchbell, so Find chats lists the chats the bot has seen since you turned them on. Send the bot a message first if a chat is missing.
  • You can always approve on the Auto-actions page instead.

Discord

  1. In Discord: Channel settings › Integrations › Webhooks › New webhook › Copy Webhook URL.
  2. In Watchbell: Alerts › Notifications › Discord webhook › Connect, paste the whole URL and save.
  3. Press Send test.

The URL is encrypted before it is saved and never shown again. Anyone with the URL can post to that channel, so treat it like a password. Discord gets the same messages as Telegram, without buttons.

Daily email digest

The digest is sent through Resend. The free plan allows 100 emails a day; Watchbell sends one.

  1. Create a Resend account and verify a domain you own (Resend › Domains). Without a verified domain Resend only delivers to your own Resend account address.

  2. Create an API key with Sending access only (it starts with re_).

  3. Add both to app/.env and restart Watchbell:

    RESEND_API_KEY=re_...
DIGEST_FROM=Watchbell <noreply@your-domain.example>

    DIGEST_FROM must use the domain you verified.

  4. In Watchbell: Alerts › Notifications › Daily email digest, enter the address to send to and save.

  5. Press Send test.

Language

Each channel has its own language: English or Bahasa Indonesia. Pick it next to the channel. This changes only what Watchbell sends; the web console stays in English.

Quiet rules

These are built in and can't be changed. They explain why a message may not arrive:

  • While CollectorStale fires (the collector stopped running), no other alert is sent, because the data is stale.
  • A paused database mutes MonitorDown and HighLatency for the apps linked to it.
  • An alert resolves only after 2 good checks in a row, so a flapping site doesn't page you twice.
  • An alert in a maintenance window doesn't open at all (see Pages › Uptime).
  • A silenced alert sends nothing until the silence ends.

If nothing arrives at all, see Troubleshooting.

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