Icinga Notifications: Improving Alerting and Incident Workflows

Explore the new capabilities in Icinga Notifications and learn how to build cleaner, more efficient alerting workflows.

Reduce noise, improve response times, and build alerting workflows your on-call teams can trust

Modern monitoring is not just about alerting, it’s about reducing noise, protecting on-call engineers from burnout, and improving incident MTTR through context-aware workflows. Icinga Notifications helps teams achieve just that with configurable, extensible alert processing built for scale.

This webinar was held on February 17, 2026. We dive into the brand-new Icinga Notifications capabilities, a modern approach to alerting and incident workflows tailored for complex, dynamic infrastructures.

In this session, we cover:

  • The design philosophy behind Icinga Notifications
  • Configuring cleaner alert flows with schedules
  • Incident workflows and escalation logic
  • Live Demo
  • Interactive Q&A session

Whether you’re managing distributed systems, hybrid clouds, or large fleets of services, this session will help you rethink alerting through cleaner workflows, smarter routing, and better incident context.

Questions and Answers

Due to time constraints, we were unable to address all questions during the webinar. We have compiled the most relevant questions and provided the corresponding answers below.

Is the notification via an incident mandatory? Or can notifications just be sent like now, event based?

Notifications can be sent like now, based on state changes and events related to an object.

Are incidents created automatically?

Yes. Notifications are created automatically depending on the sources configuration which determine what a problem is.

Is there an incident created per event, or if events happen in the same timeframe, would they automatically be added to a single overarching incident?

Events are related to objects, eg. Hosts or Services. The Incident is a summary of the Events related to problems of those objects.

Is Business Process an available as a source for Icinga Notifications?

Not yet, but all modules will get an integration with Icinga Notifications in the future.

Can contacts from Icinga be synced automatically with Icinga Notifications?

Yes, currently you can use the API to create and manage contacts in Icinga Notifications. Future versions will include connectors to Active Directory and LDAP.

Is there a validation view / check that shows any missing minutes?

Gaps are visible in the result overview of schedules. Gaps that are to small to be visible are currently not validated in another way, but we will consider this for a future release.

Is it possible to manually take over a shift from a contact for a certain period of time?

Yes, an additional rotation within a schedule can override previous rotations. Overrides can be managed by dragging rotation to a higher or lower position.

Can the notifications module also be used from external (monitoring) tools, e.g. Prometheus Alertmanager, using a webhook or something similar?

Yes, Icinga Notifications is meant to be used by third party data sources as well through its API. We're currently working on a simpler implementation to make it easier to connect third party tools and custom scripts.

Is there a option to execute custom scripts as notification? e.g. to call a API?

The current version (v0.2.0) allows custom web hooks which can be used to trigger custom script. The next version will allow the execution of scripts natively.

Will there be tooltips or other visible information for filters in Event Rules without opening them?

Yes!

How will Icinga Notifications be integrated with the Icinga JIRA module?

We haven't reached the point yet to make detailed considerations about every module, but it's clear that we aim to integrate all official Icinga modules with Icinga Notifications and provide a similar behaviour like they had before. Since each source of Icinga Notifications can behave differently, this allows us a deeper and well thought integration that matches the use case of each source.

Can I create tickets on a ticketing sytsem instead of sending messages?

Yes, this is possible by using a web hook as a channel which can call the API of your ticketing system.

Will there be a mechanism which stores notifications, which could not be sent?

Yes. While this is not available in the current version (0.2.0) we have this on our roadmap for a future version.

Will the Icinga for Kuberntes Modul be updated to send the Cluster Name to Icinga Notifications?

Yes! The next release of Icinga for Kubernetes will enhance the integration with Icinga Notifications.

Currently, I am using a script to send SMS notifications utilizing the notification feature of Icinga 2. Will the Custom (script) function allow me to continue this functionality?

Yes!

Regarding Downtimes: will existing downtimes be applied or will there be new downtimes specific to the Notifications module?

Yes, downtimes and acknowledgement will remain and considered by Icinga Notifications.

Is in the future there a channel where I can send to SMS Gateways?

Yes. Our goal is to have dedicated channels for SMS Gatways and online SMS providers in the future. The configuration of the phone number will be part of these channels.