---
title: Alerting and incident management
description: A red dot on a dashboard is not the same as knowing something is wrong. You can now define alert rules on your monitors, and when a check starts failing…
canonical: https://watchfor.io/changelog/2026-04-14-alerting-and-incidents
---

[All updates](/changelog/page/10#2026-04-14-alerting-and-incidents) ✨ New Apr 14, 2026 · v 1.0.0

# Alerting and incident management

A red dot on a dashboard is not the same as knowing something is wrong. You can now define alert rules on your monitors, and when a check starts failing WatchFor opens an incident for it, each with its own detailed view of what happened and when. Rules are set per monitor, so you can tune them to each check.

Every confirmed problem becomes an incident you can filter and open.

Each monitor's rules, on its Alerting tab.

## Why

A red dot tells you a check failed once. It doesn't tell you whether the failure was real, how long it lasted or who is looking at it. Alert rules and incidents answer those questions.

## How it works

- Every monitor starts with rules that fit its type. An HTTP monitor, for example, alerts when the site can't be reached or answers outside 2xx and 3xx. More rules, such as response time or a keyword in the page, are presets you switch on.

- One failed check never opens an incident. The monitor shows Degraded , WatchFor checks again, and an incident opens only after three failures in a row. You can change that number per monitor.

- An incident moves from Firing to Acknowledged to Resolved , and it resolves by itself after three good checks.

## Example

Your checkout page starts returning 502 at 14:02. The monitor turns Degraded, the next checks fail too, and an incident opens. Someone acknowledges it at 14:06, the fix ships at 14:20, and once three checks pass the incident closes itself. Its page keeps the whole timeline.

## Where to find it

Rules live on each monitor's Alerting tab, and incidents under Incidents in the sidebar. See [Alert rules](/docs/alerting) and [How incidents work](/docs/alerting/incidents).

Since then, incidents gained [Warning and Critical severities](/changelog/2026-04-23-alert-severities), [notification channels](/changelog/2026-04-23-notification-channels) and a [plain-language explanation](/changelog/2026-07-24-incident-explanations).

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Canonical page: https://watchfor.io/changelog/2026-04-14-alerting-and-incidents · Site guide: https://watchfor.io/llms.txt