Why is an alert missing an attribute?

If you're receiving alerts successfully, but some of the attributes aren't getting set correctly, there are a few tools you can use to figure out what the problem is.

🕵 Inspect the original payload

To see exactly what data we received, navigate to the alert and click "Inspect" in the overflow menu:

This shows you:

• what the original payload we received was

• what JavaScript was used to extract attributes from that payload (in case someone has changed them since the alert was received!)

• what that Javascript returned, and whether that matched any catalog types

🏗 Common issues

Unexpected payload

Your alert source might not be sending the same data for all alerts, meaning that an expression that normally returns a value doesn't return anything sometimes!

This will show up in the inspector as the JavaScript returning no value.

You can fix this by:

• changing the configuration inside your alert source, to make sure (for example) all alerts have a team label

• using || in your JavaScript to define multiple ways of finding an attribute, for example $.metadata.team || $.labels.team

Missing catalog entry

For catalog-powered alert attributes, if your JavaScript returns a value that can't be found in Catalog, the attribute won't get set.

This will show up in the inspector as the JavaScript returning a value, but no entry matching.

You can fix this by:

• checking the configuration inside your alert source for typos - for example team=paymnts won't find a team called Payments!

• using aliases in Catalog to make a single catalog entry match many different input strings - you can learn more about this here