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A channel is the smallest unit for managing incidents in Flashduty On-call. It encapsulates alerts, integrations, escalation rules, and personnel permissions for specific businesses together, enabling alert isolation and precise assignment.

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Planning Channels

Proper planning can significantly improve operational efficiency.
Recommended: Create separate channels for “Order System” or “DBA Team”.Avoid: Mixing unrelated businesses (e.g., “Office Network Devices” and “Core Trading System”) into the same channel.

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Creating a Channel

Go to Channels → Create Channel. The wizard has three steps, and steps 2 and 3 are skippable — you can fill them in later from the channel details page.

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Step 1: Channel information

1

Fill in Basic Information

Enter Channel Name, preferably named after business type or team
2

Select Owning Team

Select Owning Team, members of this team have full operational permissions for the channel
3

Set Managing Team (Optional)

If you need to delegate channel management permissions to other teams, set Managing Teams (up to 3). When set, managing teams take over management permissions (edit, delete, etc.) from the owning team, but both teams retain read access. This feature must be enabled by contacting the Flashduty team; it is not enabled by default.
4

Set Access Level

  • Public: Visible to all users in the account, can view and operate incidents but cannot modify channel configuration
  • Private: Only visible to the owning team (or managing team), creator, and account administrators
5

Configure Auto-resolve Timeout (Optional)

Enable the auto-resolve timeout toggle, then configure the following parameters:
  • Window timing start: Select Incident trigger (timer starts from when the incident is first triggered, suitable for alerts without automatic recovery) or Alerts stop merging (timer starts from the last alert merge, suitable for scenarios with alert grouping enabled)
  • Timeout duration: Set the timeout duration in minutes, hours, or days, up to a maximum of 30 days
6

Configure Close with Alerts (Optional)

Enabled by default. When enabled, incidents automatically close when all associated alerts recover. When disabled, alert recovery does not auto-close the incident — you need to close it manually or rely on the auto-close timeout policy.
7

Enable Outlier Incident Detection (Optional)

When enabled, incident lists and notification content will include an “Outlier Incident” indicator for quick identification. Learn more
8

Enable External Reporting (Optional)

When enabled, external personnel can submit incident tickets via a shareable external reporting link without logging in. The system generates a shareable link that you can distribute to external personnel. Disabling external reporting immediately invalidates all previously shared links; re-enabling generates a new link.

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Step 2: Configure an escalation rule (skippable)

Set up a default escalation rule for the new channel to decide who gets notified and how when an incident fires.
  • Notification recipients: choose from a schedule, a team, or an individual
  • Notification template: required — select an enabled notification template
  • Delay window: 0 – 3600 seconds, default 0; no notification is sent if the incident is auto- or manually closed during the delay window
  • IM group chat channel (optional): simultaneously push to Feishu/Lark, Dingtalk, WeCom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and similar group chats
If you click Skip, you can add it later under Channel Details → Escalation Rules. See Configure Escalation Rules for details.

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Step 3: Ingest alert events (skippable)

Select one or more alert integrations (such as Zabbix, Prometheus, Alibaba Cloud Monitor) to attach to the current channel, and the system generates the corresponding Webhook addresses. If you click Skip, you can add them later under Channel Details → Configuration → Integrate Data → Dedicated Integrations. See Integrate Alerts for details.
If you skip steps 2 and 3, only the channel itself is created; you can add or adjust escalation rules and integrations at any time from the channel details page.

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Channel Overview

On the channel details page, the Statistics module at the top shows 4 cards by default, based on the last 7 days with comparison to the previous period: Statistics cards can be collapsed. Open the Metric Analysis page for richer trends and dimension drill-downs.

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Configuring Core Capabilities

After creating a channel, go to the Configuration tab on the details page to complete the following configurations. The Configuration tab uses a sidebar menu organized into functional groups:
  • Integrate Data: Dedicated Integrations, Drop Rules
  • Noise Reduction: Alert Grouping, Flapping Detection, Silence Rules, Inhibit Rules
  • Notification & Assignment: Escalation Rules
  • Settings: Basic Info, Advanced Settings

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Integrate Alerts

Create alert integrations in Configuration → Integrate Data → Dedicated Integrations to bring monitoring system alerts into this channel.
  • Each integration type generates an independent Webhook address
See Integrate Data for details.

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Configure Drop Rules

Configure rules in Configuration → Integrate Data → Drop Rules to filter out events that have entered the channel but don’t need processing (such as test data or invalid alerts). Dropped events will not generate new alerts or merge into existing alerts.
1

Create a Drop Rule

Click Add Drop Rule.
2

Fill in Rule Information

Enter a Rule Name (required) and Description (optional).
3

Set Filter Conditions

Configure filter conditions — supports matching by Integration Source and Severity.
4

Save the Rule

After saving, the rule is enabled by default. You can enable or disable any rule at any time from the drop rules list.
Multiple drop rules are executed sequentially in list order. If any rule matches, the event is dropped. You can drag to adjust the execution priority of rules.
Dropped events will not appear anywhere. If you are not receiving alerts, check drop rules first.Drop rules differ from silence rules and inhibit rules: silence and inhibit rules still match and process at the alert event level (alerts are created), but matched alerts will not group into or trigger any incident; drop rules discard events immediately upon ingestion, producing no alert or incident records at all.

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Configure Escalation Rules

Define incident notification paths in Configuration → Notification & Assignment → Escalation Rules: who to notify, how to notify, and how to escalate on timeout.
  • Multiple rules are matched from top to bottom by priority, matching stops on first match
  • Drag to adjust rule order
See Configure Escalation Rules for details.

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Configure Noise Reduction

Configure noise reduction capabilities under Configuration → Noise Reduction to converge massive alerts into fewer incidents: See Configure Noise Reduction for details.

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Managing Channels

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Finding Channels

  • Click the Star on channel cards to bookmark frequently used channels
  • Quickly locate target channels through Team Filter or My Favorites
  • Use the Sort by dropdown menu to order the list by the following fields:
  • Use the Sort function in the upper right corner to enter sort mode, drag and drop channel cards to adjust display order; the sort order takes effect for all users

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Changing Configuration

Go to Channel Details, then navigate to Configuration → Settings to modify configuration: Basic Info (Configuration → Settings → Basic Info):
  • Channel name, description
  • Owning team
  • Managing team (must be enabled by contacting the Flashduty team; up to 3 managing teams; when set, managing teams take over management permissions from the owning team)
  • Access level (public or private)
Advanced Settings (Configuration → Settings → Advanced Settings):
On the free and standard plans, the Outlier incident detection and External reporting toggles are hidden; the Close with alerts toggle is hidden by default — contact the Flashduty team to enable it.

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Disabling and Deleting

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Handling Incidents

Handle incidents in the Incident List tab:
  • Filter by Processing Status for triggered, acknowledged, closed, etc.
  • Select multiple incidents with the same status for Batch Close or Batch Acknowledge
  • Use Merge to combine incidents pointing to the same root cause, supports cross-channel merging
See Search and View Incidents for details.

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FAQ

  • Owning Team: The team that owns the channel and has full management permissions (edit, delete, etc.) by default
  • Managing Team: When set, managing teams take over management permissions (edit, delete, etc.) from the owning team, but both teams retain read access. This feature must be enabled by contacting the Flashduty team
  • Access Level: Controls who can see the channel and its incidents. Public channels are visible to everyone but only the owning team (or managing team) can modify configuration; private channels are only visible to the owning team (or managing team)
Enable the auto-resolve timeout toggle in Advanced Settings, then select a window timing start and timeout duration:
  • Window timing start set to Incident trigger: Timer starts from when the incident is first triggered, suitable for alert sources without automatic recovery events and when alert grouping is not enabled
  • Window timing start set to Alerts stop merging: Timer starts from the last alert merge, suitable for scenarios with alert grouping enabled, ensuring all alerts within the grouping window are processed
  • Timeout duration supports minutes, hours, or days as units, up to a maximum of 30 days
No, channel configuration (integrations, escalation rules, etc.) will be permanently deleted and cannot be recovered.
The free plan supports creating 1 channel only. Once a channel exists, the Create Channel button is disabled and prompts you to upgrade. To create more channels, upgrade to the standard plan or above. Learn about subscription plans

Integrate Data

Bring monitoring system alerts into the channel

Configure Escalation Rules

Define alert notification and escalation rules

Configure Noise Reduction

Reduce alert bombardment, improve processing efficiency