Creating an Alert Rule

Creating an Alert Rule

This article walks you through creating an alert rule in PulseAPI. Alert rules define when PulseAPI creates an incident and sends notifications.

Prerequisites: At least one notification channel must exist before you can assign it to a rule. See Setting Up Email Notifications if you haven't created one yet.

Step 1: Open the New Rule Form

  1. In the left sidebar, click Alerts.
  2. Click Alert Rules.
  3. Click New Rule in the top-right corner.

Step 2: Name the Rule

Enter a Rule Name that clearly describes what it detects. Examples:

  • "Production API — 5xx Errors"
  • "All Monitors — Response Time > 3s"
  • "SSL Expiry Warning — 14 Days"

Add an optional Description if you want to record more context about when and why this rule fires.

Step 3: Configure the Condition

Select a Condition Type and configure the threshold:

Status Code

Triggers when the response status code matches (or doesn't match) a value.

  • Operator: is equal to / is not equal to
  • Value: An HTTP status code (e.g., 200, 503)

Use this to catch failures (!= 200) or to alert on unexpected redirects (== 301).

Response Time

Triggers when the response takes longer than a threshold.

  • Operator: greater than / less than / greater than or equal to / less than or equal to
  • Value: Milliseconds (e.g., 2000 for 2 seconds)

Uptime Percentage

Triggers when uptime over a time window drops below a threshold.

  • Operator: less than / less than or equal to
  • Value: Percentage (e.g., 99.9)
  • Time window: Select a period (24 hours, 7 days, 30 days)

SSL Certificate Expiry

Triggers when the SSL certificate will expire within a certain number of days.

  • Operator: less than
  • Value: Days (e.g., 14 for a two-week warning, 7 for an urgent warning)

Step 4: Set the Scope

Choose which monitors this rule applies to:

  • All monitors (team-wide) — the rule fires for any monitor on your team that meets the condition
  • Specific monitors — select one or more monitors; the rule only fires for those endpoints

Step 5: Assign Notification Channels

Select one or more Notification Channels to receive alerts when this rule fires. You can assign email, Slack, and webhook channels to the same rule.

If no channels appear in the dropdown, create one first in Alerts → Notification Channels.

Step 6: Configure Cooldown and Priority

Cooldown Period How long to wait before this rule can fire again after it last triggered. Prevents repeated notifications for the same ongoing failure. Recommended starting values:

  • Critical rules: 5–15 minutes
  • High rules: 15–30 minutes
  • Medium / Low rules: 30–60 minutes

Priority Sets the severity of incidents created by this rule: Critical, High, Medium, or Low.

Step 7: Save the Rule

  1. Toggle Active to On (the default).
  2. Click Create Rule.

The rule is immediately active and will be evaluated on the next check cycle.

Testing the Rule

After saving, click Test Rule to simulate the rule against current data and see what it would trigger. This does not create a real incident — it's a dry run.

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Still have questions? Contact support.

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