The APM app integrates with Kibana’s alerting and actions feature. It provides a set of built-in actions and APM specific threshold alerts for you to use and enables central management of all alerts from Kibana Management.

For a walkthrough of the alert flyout panel, including detailed information on each configurable property, see Kibana’s defining alerts.

The APM app supports two different types of threshold alerts: transaction duration, and error rate. Below, we’ll create one of each.

Create a transaction duration alertedit

Transaction duration alerts trigger when the duration of a specific transaction type in a service exceeds a defined threshold. This guide will create an alert for the opbeans-java service based on the following criteria:

From the APM app, navigate to the opbeans-java service and select Alerts > Create threshold alert > Transaction duration.

Transaction duration | opbeans-java is automatically set as the name of the alert, and apm and service.name:opbeans-java are added as tags. It’s fine to change the name of the alert, but do not edit the tags.

Based on the alert criteria, define the following alert details:

Select an action type. Multiple action types can be selected, but in this example, we want to post to a Slack channel. Select Slack > Create a connector. Enter a name for the connector, and paste the webhook URL. See Slack’s webhook documentation if you need to create one.

Add a message body in markdown format. You can use the Mustache template syntax, i.e., {{variable}} to pass alert values at the time a condition is detected to an action. A list of available variables can be accessed by selecting the add variable button .

Select Save. The alert has been created and is now active!

Create an error rate alertedit

Error rate alerts trigger when the number of errors in a service exceeds a defined threshold. This guide creates an alert for the opbeans-python service based on the following criteria:

From the APM app, navigate to the opbeans-python service and select Alerts > Create threshold alert > Error rate.

Error rate | opbeans-python is automatically set as the name of the alert, and apm and service.name:opbeans-python are added as tags. It’s fine to change the name of the alert, but do not edit the tags.

Based on the alert criteria, define the following alert details:

Select the Email action type and click Create a connector. Fill out the required details: sender, host, port, etc., and click save.

Add a message body in markdown format. You can use the Mustache template syntax, i.e., {{variable}} to pass alert values at the time a condition is detected to an action. A list of available variables can be accessed by selecting the add variable button .

Select Save. The alert has been created and is now active!

Manage alerts and actionsedit

From the APM app, select Alerts > View active alerts to be taken to the Kibana alerts and actions management page. From this page, you can create, edit, disable, mute, and delete alerts, and create, edit, and disable connectors.

More informationedit

See alerting and actions for more information.