Notification channels

A notification channel is a destination where alerts land. You create a channel once, then choose it as a recipient on your alert rules, budgets, and team report emails. Channels are managed under Admin → Notifications.

Channel types

CloudQuell supports three channel types:

Email — sends alerts to one or more email addresses. Recipients don’t need CloudQuell accounts — a channel can list any address (a teammate, a shared inbox, a distribution list).
Slack — posts to a Slack channel via an incoming webhook.
Microsoft Teams — posts to a Teams channel via an incoming webhook.

Creating a channel

Creating, editing, testing, and deleting channels are Admin actions (Admin or Super Admin). Contributors can see the channels that exist and pick them as recipients on their own alert rules, budgets, and team report emails, but they can’t create, change, or remove channels. They can add email addresses directly instead (see Choosing recipients), or ask an Admin to add a channel.

Admins can create a channel under Admin → Notifications, or without leaving what they’re doing. The Recipients picker on alert rules, budgets, and team report schedules has a + New channel option. The new channel is added to your organization’s list and selected in the form you were filling in. The picker also has a Test button next to each channel for Admins.

To create a channel you give it a name, choose its type (email, slack, or teams), and provide a destination:

For an email channel, the address(es) to deliver to.
For a Slack channel, an incoming webhook URL created in your Slack workspace for the channel you want alerts in.
For a Teams channel, an incoming webhook URL created on the Teams channel (via Workflows or an incoming-webhook connector).

An agent connected through the MCP server creates channels with create_notification_channel. Creating, testing, and deleting channels are write actions, so they require the admin:write scope and an explicit confirmation on each call.

Editing a channel

To change where a channel delivers, click the pencil next to it under Admin → Notifications. You can rename the channel, paste a new webhook URL for a Slack or Teams channel, or change an email channel’s address list. For security, the current webhook URL is never shown, so leave the field blank to keep it. A channel’s type can’t be changed; to switch from Slack to Teams, create a new channel.

The change takes effect everywhere the channel is used. Every alert rule, budget, and report schedule that sends to it uses the new destination the next time it fires, and nothing needs to be re-saved. Via MCP this is update_notification_channel.

Testing a channel

After creating a channel, send a test message to confirm it’s wired up correctly.

Via MCP this is test_notification_channel. If the test doesn’t arrive, check the destination URL or address and that the receiving app still accepts the incoming webhook.

Choosing recipients

Alert rules, budgets, and team report schedules all use the same Recipients picker. You’ll find it on the alert rule and budget forms, and in a report’s Schedule report button (see Scheduled report emails). In it you can:

Tick any number of saved channels, of any type — two Slack channels and an email list, say. Each notification goes to every one of them.
Add up to five email addresses directly. Any member can do this, so a Contributor can finish an alert rule without waiting for an Admin to create a channel. For a longer or shared list, ask an Admin for an email channel.

An alert rule and a team report schedule need at least one recipient. A budget can have none, which makes it informational-only. The org-wide All Costs digest is emailed by role, so for it you only tick Slack or Teams channels, on Admin → Notifications → Email reports.

Unsubscribing from alert emails

Every email sent by an alert rule or a budget threshold crossing carries a one-click unsubscribe link (and the standard unsubscribe header your mail client surfaces). Unsubscribing suppresses that address for that one rule or budget only — other recipients and the Slack or Teams delivery are unaffected.

Recipients do not need a CloudQuell account: the link works for everyone the alert is sent to. The opt-out is durable — it survives the rule being edited or the address being re-added — until that person explicitly re-subscribes. Members can toggle their own alert emails from the rule card’s bell icon, or from Notification preferences in the account menu (also under Profile → Email preferences) — every role, including Viewers. If an unsubscribe leaves a rule with no remaining delivery targets at all, the rule is paused automatically so it doesn’t fire into the void.

Removing a channel

Deleting a channel stops it from receiving anything further — alerts, budget crossings, and report recaps — and detaches it from every alert rule, budget, and report schedule that used it. Nothing else is deleted: a rule that still has other channels, or email addresses that haven’t unsubscribed, keeps firing to those; a rule left with nowhere to deliver is paused (the card shows “Paused — channel deleted”) and resumes the moment you save it with a recipient; a budget with nothing left simply stops notifying; a report schedule keeps its email recipients and just stops mirroring to that channel (a team schedule with nothing left to send to is skipped until you re-attach a channel or add a recipient). Via MCP this is delete_notification_channel, which also requires confirmation and reports how many rules were paused and how many rules, budgets, and schedules were detached.

Alerts overview — how channels fit into alerting.
Alert rules — choose a rule’s recipients and read firing history.