Feature Idea: NRQL Alerting—Allow for control of subject and body of alert

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As an Alerts User, I would like to be able to control the content in the subject and body of my alerts that are generated when using NRQL Alerting. Currently if we implement an alert using NRQL, there is no way to control what the alert actually says.

Example: In the event we create a NRQL Alert that selects process sample data:

SELECT percentage(uniquecount(hostname), WHERE processDisplayName like '%calico-node%' ) FROM ProcessSample WHERE `ec2Tag_FARM_ROLE` = 'kubernetes-worker' and ec2Tag_FARM = 'paas-kubernetes-production-east' SINCE 3 minutes ago UNTIL 2 minutes ago

If we title the alert - Calico running on Workers, the alert’s title is automatically generated saying:

ProcessSample query result is < 100 for 5 minutes in Calico running on Workers

We would like the ability to control the title as well as the body of the Alert so that we can provide a configurable message to the person on call.

Ideally we’d also have access to pre-defined variables we could also reference in the body / title for specific data/host information.

New Relic edit

We take feature ideas seriously and our product managers review every one when plotting their roadmaps. However, there is no guarantee this feature will be implemented. This post ensures the idea is put on the table and discussed though. So please vote and share your extra details with our team.

I would prefer if the NRQL Alerts just used the policy name and condition name as per the other alerts.

As a default, I agree 100%, but I think a configurable message would give you the flexibility to be more descriptive when alerting your on-call staff.

Great input, both of you! @kvincent @stefan_garnham

I will pass this along right now—be sure to vote above!

Further to this, I would like the ability to hide the NRQL query in the alerting notifications. It is unnecessary, and confusing to users to see the “guts” behind the alerts. I think this would also be a good feature for all other types of alerts as well. Just let us title the alert condition, and that should be descriptive enough.

If you are using “ops-genie” you can config the alert message like this:
go to team–>integrations–>newrelic–>advance, and in field message put: [New Relic] {{condition_name}} , {{policy_name}}

Absolutely agree… there is an utter lack of customize-ability in the alerting feature, something that is available in most other enterprise level products of this nature. I was actually surprised to see how rigid the alerting system in New Relic is. Please give us the ability to customize the subject and content of these e-mails so that we can more effectively use alerts!

Thanks for sharing a solution that worked for you @emiliano.gimenez!

And @Michael.Sleep, I will pass your use case and need for this along. I hope you also voted in our poll at the top of the post. The more votes we collect, the better.

Just wanted to ask for updates about the feature raised last 2017 in this link https://discuss.newrelic.com/t/feature-idea-nrql-alerting-allow-for-control-of-subject-and-body-of-alert/46496. That we can control the Email Subject and Body of the New Relic Alert? Thank you

Hi there @Jomar_Soco - thanks for raising this again. At this point in time, you can add a customer description to your alerts (see: https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/alerts-applied-intelligence/new-relic-alerts/alert-conditions/alert-custom-violation-descriptions) but you still can not edit the subject or body of the email. At this point I don’t have any information I can share about when or if we will implement this request.