You can enrich your alerts by adding properties to tests, models and sources in your .yml files. The supported attributes are: owner, subscribers, description, tags.

You can configure and customize your alerts by configuring: custom channel, suppression interval, alert fields(for test alerts only), alert grouping, alert filters.

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Alert properties in .yml files

Elementary prioritizes configuration in the following order:

For models / sources:

  1. Model config block.
  2. Model properties.
  3. Model path configuration under models key in dbt_project.yml.

For tests:

  1. Test properties.
  2. Tests path configuration under tests key in dbt_project.yml.
  3. Parent model configuration.
meta:
  owner: "@jessica.jones"
  subscribers: ["@jessica.jones", "@joe.joseph"]
  description: "This is the test description"
  tags: ["#marketing", "#data_ops"]
  channel: data_ops
  alert_suppression_interval: 24
  slack_group_alerts_by: table
  alert_fields: ["description", "owners", "tags", "subscribers", ...]

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Alert content

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Owner

Elementary enriches alerts with owners for models or tests).

  • If you want the owner to be tagged on slack use '@' and the email prefix of the slack user (@jessica.jones to tag jessica.jones@marvel.com).
  • You can configure a single owner or a list of owners (["@jessica.jones", "@joe.joseph"]).
models:
  - name: my_model_name
    meta:
      owner: "@jessica.jones"

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Subscribers

If you want additional users besides the owner to be tagged on an alert, add them as subscribers.

  • If you want the subscriber to be tagged on slack use '@' and the email prefix of the slack user (@jessica.jones to tag jessica.jones@marvel.com).
  • You can configure a single subscriber or a list (["@jessica.jones", "@joe.joseph"]).
models:
  - name: my_model_name
    meta:
      subscribers: "@jessica.jones"

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Test description

Elementary supports configuring description for tests that are included in alerts. It's recommended to add an explanation of what does it mean if this test fails, so alert will include this context.

tests:
  - not_null:
    meta:
      description: "This is the test description"

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Tags

You can use tags to provide context to your alerts.

  • You can tag a group or a channel in a slack alert by adding #channel_name as a tag.
  • Tags are aggregated,so a test alert will include both the test and the parent model tags.
models:
  - name: my_model_name
    tags: ["#marketing", "#data_ops"]

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Alerts distribution

Elementary allows you to customize alerts to distribute the right information to the right people. This way you can ensure your alerts are valuable and avoid alert fatigue.

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Custom channel

Elementary supports configuring custom Slack channels for models and tests. By default, Elementary uses the Slack channel that was configured in the Slack integration. Even if a custom channel is defined for every test, you must specify a default fallback channel, either using the CLI or the config.yml file.

models:
  - name: my_model_name
    meta:
      channel: data_ops

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Suppression interval

Don’t want to get multiple alerts if the same test keeps failing? You can now configure an alert_suppression_interval, this is a “snooze” period for alerts on the same issue.

The accepted value is in hours, so 1 day snooze is alert_suppression_interval: 24. Elementary won't send new alerts on the same issue that are generated within suppression interval.

Note: if you configure a suppression interval using this method, it will override the value in the global configuration.

models:
  - name: my_model_name
    meta:
      alert_suppression_interval: 24

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Group alerts by table

By default, Elementary sends a single alert to notify on each failure with extensive information for fast triage.

Elementary also supports grouping alerts by table. In this case, a single Slack notification will be generated containing all issues associated with this table. The created notification will contain a union of the relevant owners, tags and subscribers.

Due to their nature, grouped alerts will contain less information on each issue.

models:
  - name: my_model_name
    meta:
      slack_group_alerts_by: table

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Alert fields

Currently this feature is supported only by test alerts!

You can decide which fields to include in the alert, and create a format of alert that fits your use case and recipients.
By default, all the fields are included in the alert.

Supported alert fields:

  • table: Displays the table name of the test
  • column: Displays the column name of the test
  • description: Displays the description of the test
  • owners: Displays the owners of the model on which the test is running
  • tags: Displays the dbt tags of the test/model
  • subscribers: Displays the subscribers of the test/model
  • result_message: Displays the returned message from the test result
  • test_parameters: Displays the parameters that were provided to the test
  • test_query: Displays the query of the test
  • test_results_sample: Displays a sample of the test results
models:
  - name: my_model_name
    meta:
      alert_fields: ["description", "owners", "tags", "subscribers"]

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Alerts global configuration

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Enable/disable alerts

You can choose to enable / disable alert types by adding a var to your dbt_project.yml.

Vars will be deprecated soon! For OSS users, we recommend filtering the alerts using CLI selectors instead.

Below are the available vars and their default config:

dbt_project.yml
vars:
  disable_model_alerts: false
  disable_test_alerts: false
  disable_warn_alerts: false
  disable_skipped_model_alerts: true
  disable_skipped_test_alerts: true