How do I send Rius alerts to email?

Rius sends alerts to email through an email channel that you add on the Alerts page and attach to an alert. Every firing of that alert then goes to each recipient on the channel as its own copy. Delivery results show on each firing’s page, so you can confirm the mail went out.

How it works

A channel is a destination you define once per workspace, then attach to any number of alerts. While an alert is enabled, every firing goes to each of its attached, enabled channels. Channels are admin-only, including viewing them. A member does not see the Distribution channels section or an alert’s Delivers to list.

What an email channel sends:

• One mail per recipient. Each recipient gets their own copy, so nobody sees the other addresses.
• A designed HTML mail with a plain-text fallback. It includes a deep link to the firing and the firing’s age next to its UTC timestamp.
• One mail per firing. Deliveries are not batched, so a noisy alert sends a mail for every firing.
• An unsubscribe link in every footer. Mail clients such as Gmail also show their own Unsubscribe button for it.

For the other channel types and their delivery details, see Distribution channels. The overall alert model is on the Alerts page.

Set it up

1. Add the channel. Sign in as an admin and open the Alerts page. In the Distribution channels section, open the new channel dialog, choose email, name the channel and add the recipients.
2. Route alerts to it. Open the details page of the alert you want mailed and find the Delivers to section. Attach the email channel there. Repeat for each alert that should reach these recipients. Check that both the alert and the channel are enabled.
3. Test it. Deliveries happen when an alert fires, so the first firing is your test. Open that firing’s page, which shows the outcome of every delivery attempt, and check that the email attempt succeeded. Then ask a recipient to confirm the mail arrived.
4. Read failures. If mail is failing, the channel’s row on the Alerts page shows a warning that reads check the recipients, with the number of failures in a row. Under it, the row prints the last error word for word, with the time it happened. The warning clears on the next successful delivery.

Alerts page > Distribution channels > new channel > email
Alert details page > Delivers to > attach the channel

After five failed deliveries in a row, Rius disables the channel so it stops retrying. The last error stays on the disabled row. Fix the cause, then enable the channel again.

What you get

• Each firing lands in the inbox of every recipient, with a link straight to the firing.
• Recipients see the firing’s age and its UTC timestamp, so they can tell how fresh it is.
• Delivery outcomes are visible per firing, and a failing channel shows its last error on the Alerts page.
• Recipients can opt out themselves, with no Rius account needed. The unsubscribe link opens a page that names the address, the channel and the workspace, and the recipient confirms with a button. It removes the address from that channel only. If the address is on other email channels in the same workspace, the page also offers Unsubscribe from all alert emails for that workspace.
• Admins stay in control. You see the address gone from the recipient list and can add it back, and an address that is added back gets mail again.
• If the last recipient unsubscribes, the channel is disabled and has no recipients. To turn it back on, add a recipient and then enable the channel.

When something else fits

• If your team reads alerts in chat, a Slack channel posts each firing into a Slack channel you pick.
• If you want to feed another system, a webhook channel POSTs a JSON body per firing to an HTTPS URL, including a bounded sample of trace IDs.
• If email volume is too high, tune the alert’s thresholds rather than muting the channel, because every firing sends its own mail.

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