Post alerts to a Google Chat space

Publish ilert alerts into a Google Chat space and accept, reroute, and resolve them there, without opening ilert.

Install and connect the ilert app first

An Admin or Account owner connects the app once, as described in the Google Chat app guide. Creating the alert action below needs no admin role.

Alerts reach Google Chat through an alert action: a rule that publishes the alerts of one or more alert sources to one space. Create one alert action per space.

Create a Google Chat alert action

1

Add the ilert app to the space

A space only appears in ilert once the ilert app is a member of it, so add the app first. Only named spaces can be used — not group chats or direct messages.

2

Start a new alert action

In the sidebar, go to Alerting → Alert actions and click Create new alert action.

You can also start from the alert source: open it, go to its Alert actions tab, and click Create new alert action there. The source is filled in for you.

3

Choose Google Chat

Select the Google Chat tile and leave Use webhook unticked — the webhook variant posts cards without the buttons. Click Next.

4

Choose the alert sources and the events to publish

Select the alert sources whose alerts should reach the space. Trigger mode stays on Automatic; Google Chat alert actions cannot be triggered by hand.

Under Trigger events, only Alert created is ticked. Add at least Alert accepted and Alert resolved — see which events to pick. Click Next.

5

Skip the conditions

Conditional execution narrows an alert action to alerts that meet conditions you set. Click Next to publish every alert of the chosen sources.

6

Name it and choose the space

Give the alert action a name and pick the Space. Click Save.

Only spaces the ilert app has been added to appear in the list.

7

Save again, then test

Save opens the alert action's edit page; click Save there to reach its detail page. Click Test in the top right, and a test alert appears in the space.

What the message looks like

The card carries the alert's status and summary as a link into ilert, the alert details, and the fields you need while triaging: Escalation policy, Priority, Labels, Responders, Links, Affected services, and the images attached to the alert.

The card is written in your ilert account's language.

The buttons

Button	What it does
Accept	Takes ownership of the alert, which stops the escalation
Reroute	Assigns the alert to a different escalation policy, chosen in a dialog
Resolve	Closes the alert
More actions → Escalate	Moves the alert to a chosen level of its escalation policy. Offered on high-priority alerts only
More actions → Add responder	Adds a user, or the person currently on call in a schedule
More actions → Merge into another alert	Merges this alert into another open alert
More actions → Add comment	Writes a comment on the alert
More actions → Raise priority	Raises a low-priority alert to high. Offered on low-priority alerts only

Resolved alerts keep no buttons, and an alert that was merged into another shows a link to the main alert instead.

Accept and Resolve work for everyone in the space, including people without an ilert account. Every other button needs an ilert user whose username or email address matches the Google account.

Choose which events reach Google Chat

The Trigger events you tick decide when the card is updated in place, and which short notes are posted as replies in its thread — "Name accepted the alert", "Alert assigned to Name", "Alert priority raised", and so on. An event you leave unticked leaves the card alone — including when the change was made from Google Chat itself.

With only Alert created ticked, the card is not updated as the alert moves on. Somebody presses Accept in the space, the alert is accepted in ilert, and the card still reads [PENDING]. Tick at least Alert accepted and Alert resolved.

Alert comment added behaves differently from the rest: a comment is posted as a new reply in the thread rather than folded into the card.

Some things reach the space whatever you tick. Three event types skip the filter entirely: the alert is merged into another alert, another alert is merged into it, and a log is attached to it. Pressing Accept or Resolve in the space also posts a short reply in the thread naming who pressed it, whether or not the matching event is ticked — but the card itself is only updated if that event is ticked.

To change the events later, open the alert action and click Edit.

FAQ

The space is not in the list

Three things have to be true: the ilert app is a member of the space, the space is a named space rather than a group chat or a direct message, and it belongs to the Google Workspace that is connected to this ilert account.

The list holds 150 spaces and searches by the beginning of the name, so type the first word. ilert keeps the list for up to ten minutes, so a space the app was removed from can linger, and one added before the app was installed can be missing until the ten minutes are up.

Can I publish alerts from several alert sources to one space?

Yes. One alert action can carry up to 49 alert sources. ilert keeps one card per alert per space, so two alert actions posting to two different spaces means two cards — but two alert actions posting to the same space share one card, and the second one updates the first rather than posting again.

Are comments written in the space synced to the alert?

Only through More actions → Add comment. A plain reply in the thread stays in Google Chat: ilert never turns a message in a space into an alert comment, unlike Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Nothing arrives in the space. Where do I look?

Open the alert action and read Alert action logs at the bottom of its detail page: recent deliveries are listed with their status, and failures carry Google's error message. The usual cause is that the ilert app was removed from the space.