Telegram for your team

Send your workspace's alerts to a Telegram group your team shares, which is great for on-call. Everyone in the group sees a monitor go down at the same moment, anyone can acknowledge it from the message, and the message says who is on it. There's nothing to copy: you pick the group in Telegram.

Just for yourself? That's a different thing: your own notifications in your own Telegram. See Get urgent problems on your phone with Telegram.

#Three ways in

Go to Integrations → Telegram and click Connect (or Add account if Telegram is already set up). You'll see three choices:

• Add a Telegram group (recommended): your team's group, picked in Telegram. The InfraNest bot joins it.
• Get alerts on my phone: your own notifications, in your own Telegram. This opens the personal set-up.
• Advanced: a chat ID or your own bot, folded away: for a chat you can't pick from a link, or to send from a bot of your own.

#Add your team's group

Before you start: you need to be allowed to add destinations in your workspace, and to be able to add members to the Telegram group.

1. Under Add a Telegram group, click Connect.

2. Open Telegram and pick your team's group.

   • On this computer: click Open in Telegram.
   • On your phone: scan the QR code.

   The link works once, for 15 minutes. The dialog says Waiting for you to pick a group… until you do.

3. Telegram asks which group to add the InfraNest bot to. Pick it and confirm.

4. In the group, the bot says Linked to Northwind Cloud. The team's alerts arrive in this group from now on. In InfraNest the dialog says Linked: Telegram — Northwind on-call.

5. Click Done. The group appears as a destination, named after the group, for example Telegram — Northwind on-call.

Then choose which alerts go there, as for any destination (below).

If your plan has no room for another chat, InfraNest says so before Telegram opens. If the bot says the group can't be added, something changed in those 15 minutes: the person who started it may no longer add destinations, or the plan filled up. If the dialog says This link has expired., select Get a new link.

#Choose which alerts go to the group

A group receives what you send it. In Alerts, choose the Telegram group as a destination for the alert rules you want there — for example monitor down and monitor recovered. See Alerts and destinations.

#In the group

Each alert arrives with buttons the whole team can use:

• Acknowledge: says you're on it. The message changes to Acknowledged by Alex at 03:12, for everybody, so nobody else chases it. It also stops the repeat alerts, and acknowledges it in PagerDuty if you use it.
• Silence 1 h: no more alerts about this monitor for an hour. The message says who silenced it, and until when.
• 📝 Add a note (once someone is on it): tell the team what you're doing. Tap it, or just reply to the alert, and your reply becomes a note on the incident. The alert then shows 📝 Alex: Rolling back the deploy.
• Ask Claude ↗ (while an incident is open, on plans that include incidents): opens Claude with the incident's investigation ready.
• Open in InfraNest.

Who can use the buttons? Anyone in the group who has linked their own Telegram to InfraNest and is a member of the workspace. Each tap acts as that person, with their own permissions. Someone who hasn't linked their Telegram is told how. See Get urgent problems on your phone with Telegram.

If you're in the group and have your own Telegram linked too, your own message about the same problem arrives silently, so your phone doesn't ring twice.

When the problem is over, the alert message is updated to say so.

Read an alert's state at a glance: InfraNest reacts to its own alerts. 👀 means someone is on it, and 👌 means it's over. (If your group limits which reactions can be used, the message text still says it.)

Long error details are folded into a short quote. Tap it to read the rest.

When the group is first linked, InfraNest posts a short introduction there, so everyone knows what these messages and buttons are. The introduction has a Link my Telegram button for anyone who hasn't linked yet. The first time you acknowledge, add a note or send /status, InfraNest may send you a one-line tip in your own chat with the bot. You never get the same tip twice, and tips never go to the group.

#Topics and pinned outages

Groups with topics: alerts go to the topic where you added InfraNest. To move them, send /here in the topic you want; /here in General moves them back to General.

Pin the ongoing outage: send /pin on in the group. When a monitor goes down, its alert is then pinned while the problem is open, and unpinned when it's over, so it doesn't scroll away in a busy group. This needs InfraNest to be a group admin with the Pin messages right; if it isn't, it tells you. /pin off stops it.

Both commands work for anyone in the group who has linked their own Telegram and may change monitoring in InfraNest.

#Post a status update from Telegram

In your own chat with the bot, send /update. (In the group itself, the bot only answers /start, /here and /pin.)

1. Pick the incident, then its status.
2. Reply with the message for your status page.
3. You then see the update as it will appear. It's public, so choose Publish and notify subscribers, Publish without notifying, or Cancel.

You can post updates only on open incidents that are on one of your status pages, and only if your role in InfraNest may change monitoring. /app opens InfraNest in your browser, signed in as usual.

#Look something up, or share it in a chat

In your own chat with the bot, send /status with a name to see how one thing is doing: /status api, /status api.example.com, /status db-1 or a domain. You get its state, since when, and who is on it, with a button to open it.

To share it in any chat, including a group, type @InfraNestBot and a name in the message box, for example @InfraNestBot api, then pick it from the list. That chat then sees the same card. You only ever find things in your own workspaces that your role may see.

#Stop alerts to the group

Remove the InfraNest bot from the group in Telegram. The destination is removed with it. You can also do it in InfraNest: under Integrations → Telegram → Connections & settings, open the group's ⋯ menu. It has Send test, Edit (the destination's own page) and Delete.

If the group becomes a supergroup (Telegram does this as groups grow), InfraNest follows it automatically.

#Advanced: a chat ID, or your own bot

Use this for a chat you can't pick from a link, or to send alerts from a bot of your own, for example one with your company's name and picture.

The order matters. A bot can only post in a chat it has been added to, and only after /start. Adding the bot after sending /start looks the same and does not work. This order is the usual reason nothing arrives.

#With the InfraNest bot and a chat ID

1. In Telegram, open the chat or group you want alerts in and add the InfraNest bot as a member.
2. Send /start in that chat. The bot replies with the chat's ID, for example -1001234567890.
3. In InfraNest, under Advanced: a chat ID or your own bot:
   • give it a Name, for example Ops group;
   • leave Which bot sends the messages? on InfraNest's bot — nothing to create;
   • paste the ID into Which chat should it post in?
4. Click Connect.

A group added this way behaves like one added from the link: removing the InfraNest bot from it removes the destination, and InfraNest follows it if it becomes a supergroup.

#With your own bot

1. In Telegram, message @BotFather, send /newbot, and follow its questions. It gives you a token like 123456789:AA….
2. Add your bot to the chat or group, then send /start there.
3. Get the chat's ID. One way: add the InfraNest bot to the same chat for a moment and send /start; it replies with the ID.
4. In InfraNest, under Advanced: a chat ID or your own bot:
   • choose My own bot — I have a token from @BotFather;
   • paste Your bot's token and the chat ID;
   • click Connect.

Buttons under alerts only work with the InfraNest bot: taps on your own bot go to your bot, not to us. Alerts from your own bot arrive without buttons.

#Good to know

• Your token is stored securely and never shown again after saving.
• A group gets the team's alerts, not anyone's personal notifications. Personal notifications go only to each person's own Telegram.
• Telegram counts as a chat destination on your plan. If the plan has no room for another, the bot says so in the group.

#Related articles

• Get urgent problems on your phone with Telegram
• Alerts and destinations
• When a connection stops working