Telegram Integration Guide
Integration overview
Sentinel sends alerts to Telegram through its own bot, so there is no bot to create and no token to paste. Connect a direct message, a group or a channel from your team's Integrations page, and outages, warnings and recoveries arrive there as messages with links back to the monitor and the incident. A team can connect several chats, each with its own choice of severities.
Requirements
- In Telegram: the account that will tap the connect link, or, for a group or channel, permission to add a bot to it.
- In Sentinel: a team owner or admin. Telegram alerts are available on every plan, including Free.
Integration walkthrough
Direct messages
- In Sentinel, open your team's Integrations page and click Add chat under Telegram. Give it a name and choose which severities to send.
- The new chat shows an Open in Telegram link. Open it and tap Start.
- The bot replies that the chat is connected, and the row in Sentinel flips from "Waiting for Telegram" to connected within a few seconds.
- Click Test to receive a test message.
Groups and channels
- Add a chat in Sentinel as above. The row shows the bot's username and a
/connectcommand with a one-time code. - In Telegram, add the bot to the group or channel. For a channel, make it an administrator so it can post.
- Send the
/connectcommand from the row in that group or channel. The bot confirms and the row connects.
Each connect code works once. If a code is lost or expires, remove the pending row and add the chat again.
What gets sent
Every alert Sentinel sends to Slack is sent to Telegram in the same words: outages and recoveries, keyword and JSON-assertion failures, payment-check failures, unreachable pings and ports, missed heartbeats, expiring and invalid certificates, domain expiry, DNS changes, slow responses and Lighthouse regressions. Each message carries the monitor name, the reason, the region that detected it, and links to the monitor and the incident in Sentinel.
Each chat chooses which severities it hears about: critical (down, unreachable, missed, failed assertions),
warning (expiring certificates and domains, slow responses, keyword failures) and info (recoveries and
resolutions). A monitor's own Notifications page has a Telegram row too; untick a severity there to keep that monitor out of Telegram for it.
Over the API and the Terraform provider the same routing is the telegram key inside
notification_settings.channels.
Delivery health
The integrations page shows when each chat last received a message and a running failure streak when Telegram stops accepting them. If the bot is removed from a group or blocked in a direct message, Telegram tells Sentinel and the chat is paused automatically. Add the bot back and press Test to resume.
FAQ and troubleshooting
- The row stays on "Waiting for Telegram". The link was not opened, or the /connect command was sent from a different chat. Open the link from the device where you use Telegram, or re-send the command in the right group.
- The bot says the link has already been used. Each code connects one chat once. Add a new chat in Sentinel for a second group.
- Nothing arrives during an outage. Check the chat is connected and not paused, its severities include the one that fired, and the monitor's Notifications page has Telegram ticked for that severity.
- Test says Telegram did not accept the message. The bot was removed from the chat, or a channel took away its posting rights. Add it back as an administrator and test again.
How to uninstall
Remove the chat from Sentinel's Integrations page. Sentinel stops sending at once. Then remove the bot from the group or channel in Telegram, or block it in a direct message; either also pauses the row on Sentinel's side if you do it first.
Support
For help with this integration, email [email protected] or use the contact form. Include the chat name from the Integrations page and, for a delivery problem, the time of the alert.