Slack integration
Post Oncallz incidents to a Slack channel
Each Oncallz team can post its incidents to one or more Slack channels: when an incident opens, is acknowledged, escalates or is resolved. The message shows severity, status, who acted and, when available, the AI analysis. Paging still goes to the on-call engineer's phone.
Connect Slack to an Oncallz team in a few minutes
- 1 In Slack, create an app at api.slack.com/apps (or open an existing one), select Incoming Webhooks and switch on Activate Incoming Webhooks.
- 2 Click Add New Webhook to Workspace, pick the channel and copy the URL. It starts with https://hooks.slack.com/services/.
- 3 In Oncallz, open Teams, select the team and find Chat notifications. Team leads see this section.
- 4 Choose Slack as the destination, give it a name such as #incidents, paste the incoming webhook URL, tick the events to post (Incident triggered, acknowledged, escalated, resolved) and click Add notification.
- 5 Trigger a test incident through one of the team's integrations and check that the message arrives.
What does the Slack message contain?
Each message has a coloured bar and a heading for the event, with the incident title linked to the incident in Oncallz.
- Team, severity and status.
- Acknowledged by and resolved by, once someone has acted.
- The AI analysis, when AI investigation ran with your own provider key: a summary, the probable cause, a suggested action and a confidence score.
Which events can be posted?
Incident triggered, acknowledged, escalated and resolved. You choose any combination per channel, so one channel can get every update while a management channel only hears about new incidents.
Notifications belong to a team: a channel only receives incidents for that team, and a team can have several channels.
Can Slack also hear about schedule changes?
Yes, through an organisation-wide webhook. Admins can add a Slack incoming webhook URL under Settings → Webhooks; Oncallz recognises the hooks.slack.com address and formats the messages for Slack.
Those webhooks can also subscribe to "Schedule override created", which posts who is covering for whom, on which schedule, for what window and why.
Is this a two-way Slack bot?
No. Slack incoming webhooks can only post messages. There are no buttons or slash commands to acknowledge or resolve from Slack; responders do that from the Oncallz web app, the iOS app or the phone call keypad. The channel is a shared view of what is happening, not a replacement for paging.
What if Slack is unreachable?
Messages are sent from a queue. If Slack returns a server error or the connection fails, Oncallz retries with back-off, up to five attempts. Paging the on-call engineer does not depend on Slack delivery.
Frequently asked questions
Can I acknowledge an incident from Slack?
No. Oncallz posts to Slack through an incoming webhook, which is one-way, so the message has no buttons or commands. Acknowledge from the push notification, the web app, the iOS app or by pressing a key during the phone call.
The Slack message links to the incident, and the next message shows who acknowledged it.
Can different teams post to different channels?
Yes. Chat notifications are set per team, and each team can add several Slack channels with their own event choices. A channel only receives incidents that belong to its team.
For an organisation-wide feed, an admin can add a Slack webhook under Settings → Webhooks, which receives events from every team.
Does Slack replace phone and SMS paging?
No. Slack messages are for visibility: they tell the channel what is happening and who is on it. Paging still goes to whoever is on call through push notifications, SMS, phone calls and email, following your severity settings and escalation policy.
If the channel is muted overnight, the on-call engineer is still woken up.
Does the Slack integration cost extra?
No. Slack and Microsoft Teams notifications are part of the single Oncallz plan, $4 per user per month billed quarterly, with every feature included. Slack incoming webhooks are a standard Slack feature; whether you can create apps in your workspace depends on your Slack admin settings.
Related pages
- Microsoft Teams Post incident updates — triggered, acknowledged, escalated, resolved — to a team’s Microsoft Teams channel, alongside phone and SMS paging.
- Escalation policies Multi-step escalation that climbs from the on-call engineer to the team and then leads, paging until someone acknowledges or the policy runs out.
- On-call scheduling Build daily, weekly or custom on-call rotations with automatic handoffs and overrides, so every alert reaches whoever is on call right now.
Ready when the pager goes off.
Create your workspace in minutes. Free to start, no credit card — $4 per user a month when you’re ready.