What is the Payload of an Alert?

An alert payload is a collection of data that provides detailed information about an alert generated by monitoring or observability tools. It typically consists of various fields that explain the context and reason for the alert, which can differ based on the type of alert in question.

What does an Alert Payload typically include?

Alert Context Fields:These fields provide specifics about the alert. For example, a metric alert might include details like the metric name and metric value, whereas an activity log alert would contain an error message with information related to the event that triggered it. If you are working with a multi-environment-strategy, alerts should also include information about the environment. This is crucial for filtering and priotization of alerts. You will want to fix critical production issues as soon as possible, while you will not want to wake up on-call colleagues due to issues in test environments.

Custom Properties: You can extend the alert payload by incorporating custom properties. This allows for the addition of extra information relevant to the alert, beyond what is included in the default fields. This is a great practice to add further relevant alert details that help on-call users to understand and resolve incidents quickly.

Common Alert Schema: Many platforms, such as Azure Monitor, use a common alert schema to standardize the structure of alert payloads in JSON format. This consistency makes it easier for teams to quickly interpret and respond to various alerts.

Example of a JSON Payload

At All Quiet, we receive alerts from different monitoring and observability tools. Whilst the content and the content varies, the structure is always in JSON format.

Here's an example of a very simple alert payload.

        
{
    "method": "POST",
    "headers":
    {
        "Host": "https://allquiet.app",
        "Content-Type": "application/json"
    },
    "jsonBody": 
    {
        "alertName": "My Monitor",
        "alertStatus": "Failed"
    }
}
        

With this alert payload, you can easily create an All Quiet incident with our mapping engine.

Conclusion

Alert payload play an essential role in monitoring systems by delivering key information needed to address incidents. Understanding the structure and content of these payloads is crucial for improving incident response and operational efficiency. All Quiet helps you to standardize payloads from different systems by mapping them against All Quiet incidents. This streamlines different types of alerts and makes them comparable, which helps prioritzing and resolving incidents from different sources more quickly.