Grafana Howto: Setting up Alerts using Telegram as an Example
- 📖🕓 ≈ 6 min - As a continuation of our small series of articles on the open source tool Grafana, we would like to show you today, using the free instant messaging service Telegram as an example, how you can be notified of certain status changes from Grafana. Only three steps are necessary: Creating a Telegram bot Setting up a notification channel in Grafana Creating an alert in Grafana You can find out exactly how this works in the following.
Telegram: Open chat with @botfather[/caption] Starts a chat with @botfather and starts the process of creating a new bot using the /newbot command. You can then freely assign a name and username. The username must end with "bot" . The application will confirm successful creation. [caption id="attachment_12731" align="aligncenter" width="1033"]
Telegram: Start chat with @botfather and create bot with /newbot[/caption] In order to be able to send messages via the bot later, the API token contained in the confirmation message is required. Secure this together with the name and username and protect it from access by third parties (e.g. store it in a password management tool such as KeePass). [caption id="attachment_12744" align="aligncenter" width="450"]
Telegram: Confirmation with API token after successfully creating a bot[/caption] You can now add the bot you just created to an existing or newly created group. [caption id="attachment_12673" align="aligncenter" width="275"]
Telegram: create a new group[/caption] [caption id="attachment_12658" align="aligncenter" width="267"]
Telegram: add member to group[/caption] In addition to your bot, you also have to temporarily invite getidsbot to your group. This gives us some information, including the chat-id relevant to us. [caption id="attachment_12665" align="aligncenter" width="350"]
Telegram: Request chat-id via GetIDs Bot[/caption] [caption id="attachment_12669" align="aligncenter" width="350"]
Telegram: message with chat-id after adding GetIDs bot[/caption] This chat ID must also be saved. You then remove getidsbot from the group. As an alternative to a group, you can also use a channel by adding a user/bot as admin to it. The advantage of this variant is that some additional third-party systems can be connected more easily. However, certain conditions must also be met for this. However, to explain this in detail would go beyond the scope of this article.
Grafana: Alerting/Notification channels menu item[/caption] After clicking on " New Channel " you can freely assign a name for this notification channel in the view that opens. Good to know at this point: If several use the same Grafana instance, everyone within them can see the notification channels of the other users. In this case, we recommend a particularly meaningful and clear name for your channel. After selecting "Telegram" as type you have to insert the API-token and the chat-id from step 1. The test button s can be used to check whether everything is stored correctly - if everything is correct, a test message appears in the Telegram channel. [caption id="attachment_12677" align="aligncenter" width="650"]
Grafana: Configure new notification channel[/caption] [caption id="attachment_12681" align="aligncenter" width="493"]
Telegram: Alerting test message from Grafana[/caption] The notification channel is then saved using the save button.
Grafana: Panel in the dashboard with visualized door status[/caption] In the diagram, an open door is represented as "0", a closed door as "1". This state should now be monitored using our alarm: If the status is less than 1, we would like to be alarmed (door open), if it is greater than 0 or 1, an all-clear should be sent. [caption id="attachment_12308" align="aligncenter" width="382"]
Grafana: Value mappings for door status[/caption] To store the alarm, first click on the panel name as shown in the screenshot above and then select "Edit" from the drop-down menu. The following steps must be carried out there (see screenshot below):
Grafana: Set up an alert in the dashboard[/caption] Now the sample alert is fully configured and you just have to click on " Save " in the top right corner. [caption id="attachment_12310" align="alignleft" width="294"]
Grafana: save changes in dashboard (alert).[/caption] Similar to this procedure, a large number of other alerts can be set up for a wide variety of states. More detailed information and examples can also be found in various Internet forums. In addition to Telegram, other services are also available for setting up alarm notifications, such as email , Google Hangouts, HipChat, LINE, Microsoft Teams, Slack or webhook. Have you already set up alerts in Grafana yourself? If yes, which service do you use and why? Or which service would you like another article on? Off to the comments with it ;-)