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Notification Sinks

Get real-time alerts in Slack, Discord, or Telegram when important chatbot events happen — new conversations, incoming messages, or auto-paused threads that need human attention.

Availability

Notification sinks are available on every plan, including the Basic free trial. You can manage sinks from the dashboard or through the platform support assistant using natural language.

What Are Notification Sinks?

Notification sinks deliver alerts to external services when events occur in your chatbot conversations. Instead of checking the dashboard constantly, you get notified in the tools you already use.

Supported destinations: Slack, Discord, Telegram.

Use cases:

  • Get a Slack ping when a new customer starts chatting
  • Alert your support team when a conversation is auto-paused because a customer is upset
  • Monitor all incoming messages across channels in a dedicated Slack channel

Trigger Types

Each sink listens for one or more trigger types:

Trigger Fires When Best For
NEW_CONVERSATION First message in a new thread Knowing when customers reach out
EVERY_MESSAGE Every incoming message Full visibility on active threads
AUTO_PAUSED A channel rule triggers and pauses AI Escalation alerts that need human action

A single sink can listen for multiple triggers. For example, you might want both NEW_CONVERSATION and AUTO_PAUSED on one Slack channel.

How Triggers Interact

  • EVERY_MESSAGE fires on all messages, including the first message in a new thread. A built-in 5-second cooldown per thread prevents duplicate notifications — if another message arrives in the same thread within 5 seconds, it won't trigger an additional alert.
  • NEW_CONVERSATION fires only on the first message — if you have both triggers on one sink, the first message matches both (you'll get one combined notification)
  • AUTO_PAUSED fires separately when a channel rule detects a condition and pauses the conversation

Origin Filtering

By default, sinks receive notifications from all channels (Shopify Widget, Instagram DM, Website Widget, Gmail, etc.). You can narrow this with an origin filter.

Supported origins:

SHOPIFY_WIDGET · WEBSITE_WIDGET · SHARED_LINK · IG_DM · IG_COMMENT · FB_MESSENGER · FB_COMMENT · GMAIL

Examples:

  • Only Shopify alerts: set origin filter to SHOPIFY_WIDGET
  • Only social media: set origin filter to IG_DM, IG_COMMENT, FB_MESSENGER, FB_COMMENT
  • Everything: leave origin filter empty

Setting Up a Notification Sink

Step 1: Provision the Destination

  1. Go to Slack API: Incoming Webhooks
  2. Create or pick an existing app and enable Incoming Webhooks
  3. Add a webhook to your target channel
  4. Copy the webhook URL — it must start with https://hooks.slack.com/
  1. In Discord, open Server Settings → Integrations → Webhooks
  2. Click New Webhook, name it, and pick the destination channel
  3. Click Copy Webhook URL — it must look like https://discord.com/api/webhooks/<id>/<token>
  1. Talk to @BotFather, send /newbot, and copy the bot token (<digits>:<30+ chars>)
  2. Add the bot to the channel or group you want notifications in (or DM it)
  3. Get the chat ID — for groups it starts with -, for DMs it's positive. The easiest way is to send a message to the bot and call https://api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/getUpdates

Step 2: Create the Sink

You can create notification sinks in two ways:

  1. Go to Conversations → Channel Rules
  2. Find the Notification Sinks section
  3. Click Create Sink and pick Slack, Discord, or Telegram
  4. Enter a name (e.g., "#support-alerts")
  5. Paste credentials — webhook URL for Slack/Discord, or bot token + chat ID for Telegram
  6. Select trigger types
  7. Optionally set an origin filter
  8. Save

Ask the platform support assistant directly:

"Create a Discord notification sink called #escalations with webhook https://discord.com/api/webhooks/... for AUTO_PAUSED on SHOPIFY_WIDGET"

The assistant can create Slack, Discord, or Telegram sinks, list them, and test them for you.

Sink type is locked at creation

You can rename, retarget, or change triggers, but the sink type (Slack/Discord/Telegram) cannot be changed after the sink is created. Delete and recreate if you need to switch destinations.

Step 3: Test It

After creating a sink, send a test notification to verify the webhook works:

  • Dashboard: Click the Test button next to your sink
  • Support assistant: Ask "test my notification sink"

You should see a test message appear in your Slack channel within a few seconds.

Health Monitoring

Notification sinks track delivery health automatically:

Field Meaning
Last success Timestamp of the last successful delivery
Consecutive failures Number of failed deliveries in a row
Last error Error message from the most recent failure

Auto-Disable

If a sink fails 10 consecutive times, it is automatically disabled to prevent wasted resources. You'll receive an in-app notification when this happens.

Common failure causes:

  • Webhook URL was revoked or the integration was uninstalled (Slack/Discord)
  • Telegram bot was kicked from the chat, or the chat ID changed
  • Channel was archived or deleted on the destination side
  • Network issues (temporary — sink will recover on next success)

To fix: Update the webhook URL or Telegram credentials, then re-enable the sink.

Multiple Sinks

You can create up to 10 notification sinks per account. Use multiple sinks to route different events to different destinations:

Sink Triggers Origin Filter Destination
#new-leads NEW_CONVERSATION WEBSITE_WIDGET Slack #sales
#shopify-alerts NEW_CONVERSATION, AUTO_PAUSED SHOPIFY_WIDGET Discord #support
#escalations AUTO_PAUSED (all) Telegram on-call group

Message Format

Notifications include:

  • Channel origin (e.g., Shopify Widget, Instagram DM, Shared Link)
  • Customer name or visitor identifier
  • Message preview — the customer's message text
  • Thread ID for quick reference

Auto-pause notifications additionally include:

  • Triggered conditions — which detection rules fired
  • Pause count — how many times this thread has been paused

Slack uses native Block Kit formatting; Discord and Telegram receive an equivalent message with the same fields.

Troubleshooting

Not receiving notifications

Check in order:

  1. Sink is active? — Check the sink status in Channel Rules
  2. Correct triggers? — Does the sink listen for the event type you expect?
  3. Origin filter? — Is the message coming from a filtered-out channel?
  4. Webhook valid? — Send a test notification to verify
  5. Auto-disabled? — Check consecutive failures count
Getting too many notifications
  • Remove EVERY_MESSAGE trigger if you only care about new conversations
  • Add an origin filter to limit which channels trigger alerts
  • If volume is still high, consider using NEW_CONVERSATION + AUTO_PAUSED only instead of EVERY_MESSAGE
Notifications stopped working suddenly
  • Check if the sink was auto-disabled (10+ consecutive failures)
  • Slack/Discord: verify the webhook is still valid (it can be revoked from the destination side)
  • Telegram: confirm the bot is still in the chat and the chat ID hasn't changed
  • Confirm the integration/app is still installed in the workspace or server

Next Steps