Notification channels
The channels Telescope can alert you through — email, Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, SMS, and voice — and how to route them.
An alert is only useful if it reaches you. A notification channel is a destination Telescope delivers alerts to. Connect the ones your team already uses, then route them to your monitors.
Available channels
| Channel | Best for |
|---|---|
| The simplest way to start — every team member can get alerts in their inbox. | |
| Slack | Alerts land in a channel your team already watches. Connect with an incoming webhook URL. |
| Discord | Same as Slack, for teams and communities on Discord. |
| Microsoft Teams | Alerts in a Teams channel via an incoming webhook. |
| SMS | A text message for the outages that can't wait for someone to check chat. |
| Voice call | A phone call — the loudest option, ideal as the final step in an escalation. |
Chat channels use incoming webhooks
Slack, Discord, and Microsoft Teams are connected by pasting an incoming webhook URL from that app. Create the webhook in Slack/Discord/Teams, paste the URL into the channel's settings in Telescope, and you're done.
Connect a channel
Open Notifications in Telescope and add a channel:
- Choose the channel type.
- Enter its destination — an email address, a webhook URL, or a phone number.
- Save. Telescope can send a test message so you can confirm it works before relying on it.
Route alerts to the right people
Channels are organized into notification groups, and each monitor sends its alerts to a group. That means you decide, per monitor, who hears about it:
- Put your always-on channels (a shared Slack, a team email) in a default group.
- Create a separate group with SMS and voice for your most critical services, so a real outage escalates to someone's phone.
- Attach the right group to each monitor.
Recovery notifications
By default, Telescope also tells you when a monitor recovers, so an alert always has a clear end. You can turn recovery notifications off per channel if you only want to hear about problems.