Telegram
Get WatchFor alerts in Telegram — set up in under a minute, no bot-building required.
WatchFor delivers alerts through the official @WatchForAlertsBot. You don't create any bots or tokens — you only tell WatchFor which chat to send to, and the bot itself tells you that number. The whole setup is three steps.
Personal alerts (to your own Telegram)
Say hello to the bot
In Telegram, open @WatchForAlertsBot and press Start.
The bot immediately replies with a message like:
👋 This is the WatchFor alerts bot.
Chat ID for this chat:
493699112That number is your Chat ID — copy it. (Pressing Start also gives the bot permission to message you; Telegram bots can never write first.)
Add the channel in WatchFor
Go to Notification Channels → Add channel → Telegram, paste the Chat ID, and save.
Send a test
Press Send test on the new channel. A [TEST] notification should appear
in Telegram within a couple of seconds — you're done.
Team alerts (to a group)
Want the whole team to see incidents? Send them to a Telegram group instead:
- Add @WatchForAlertsBot to your group (like adding any member).
- The bot posts the group's Chat ID into the group — a negative number
like
-1001234567890. That's normal for groups. - Paste that number into a Telegram channel in WatchFor, the same way as above.
Only members of your group see these alerts — a bot conversation or group is private to its participants, never shared between WatchFor customers.
What the alerts look like
Incident messages carry the full story, not just "something broke": the monitor, a plain-language diagnosis, Expected vs Detected values, which locations confirmed the failure, and a link to the incident. When the problem clears, a recovery message follows with the outage duration.
Troubleshooting
- The bot didn't reply to Start — send it any message (e.g. "hi"); it answers every message with the Chat ID.
- Test works, but real alerts don't arrive — check that the channel is attached to a contact group used by your monitor's alert routing.
- Alerts stopped — if you blocked or deleted the bot chat, Telegram refuses delivery. Unblock the bot and press Start again; the Chat ID stays the same.
- Group ID changed — converting a group to a supergroup gives it a new ID. Remove and re-add the bot; it will post the new ID.