If you’re responsible for keeping your team’s data pipelines running (and not breaking at 2am), you know that real-time alerts aren’t a “nice to have.” You need to know when something changes, fails, or looks off—before your stakeholders do. This guide is for anyone who uses Kular to manage pipelines and wants a no-nonsense way to set up alerts that actually work.
Let’s cut the fluff and get into it.
Why Real-Time Alerts Matter (and What to Watch Out For)
A missed pipeline failure or an unnoticed config change can mean bad data, missed deadlines, or a lot of finger-pointing. But not all alerts are created equal:
- Too many alerts: You’ll train yourself to ignore them. (Alert fatigue is real.)
- Too few alerts: You’ll miss the ones that count.
- Poorly configured alerts: You get noise, not signal.
You want the Goldilocks zone: only the alerts that matter, delivered where you’ll actually see them.
Step 1: Decide What Changes Should Trigger Alerts
Before you touch Kular, get clear on what you actually care about. Here’s what most teams want to know about:
- Pipeline failures or errors
- Successful pipeline runs (sometimes)
- Pipeline configuration changes (like new steps, removed resources, or updated schedules)
- Manual interventions (someone re-runs or overrides a job)
- Resource changes (e.g., new data sources or destinations)
Pro tip: Don’t just turn on every alert “because you can.” Start with failures and critical config changes. You can always add more later.
Step 2: Figure Out Where Alerts Should Go
Notifications are useless if no one sees them. Most teams use one or more of:
- Slack channels (most common)
- Email (old school, but reliable)
- PagerDuty or Opsgenie (for teams with on-call rotation)
- Webhooks (for custom integrations)
What not to do: Don’t send everything everywhere. Pick the channel your team actually watches.
Step 3: Set Up Alert Destinations in Kular
Now, time to get your destinations ready in Kular.
3.1 Slack
- Go to Settings > Integrations in Kular.
- Add a new Slack integration. You’ll need to authorize Kular in your Slack workspace.
- Pick the channel where you want alerts to land—ideally, not your #general channel.
3.2 Email
- Under Settings > Notifications, add email addresses or distribution lists.
- If you’re sending to a group, make sure it’s not “all@company.com.” Be specific.
3.3 PagerDuty, Opsgenie, or Webhooks
- Under Integrations, add your incident management tool.
- For webhooks, paste in your endpoint URL—Kular will send a test event to make sure it works.
Heads up: Some integrations (like PagerDuty) might need you to map alert types to escalation policies. Don’t skip this, or you’ll end up with silent failures.
Step 4: Configure Alert Rules
Here’s where most people get tripped up. Kular lets you get pretty granular, but don’t overcomplicate things your first time through.
4.1 Start Simple
- Go to the Pipelines dashboard.
- Pick a pipeline you want to monitor.
- Click on Alert Rules (or “Notifications”—Kular’s UI changes sometimes).
4.2 Choose Triggers
- Failures: Enable alerts for failed runs. This is table stakes.
- Successes: Only turn this on if you really need a heads-up for every success (99% of teams don’t).
- Config Changes: Turn this on if you care about who changed what—super useful for audit trails.
4.3 Set Severity (if available)
Some teams want “all failures” to go to Slack, but only “critical” ones to trigger PagerDuty. If Kular supports severity levels, use them. If not, keep it simple and focus on failures and changes.
4.4 Set Who Gets What
You can usually route different alert types to different destinations. For example:
- Failures: Slack + PagerDuty
- Config changes: Just Slack
- Manual runs: Email to data engineering leads
Don’t send everything to everyone. That’s how you get ignored.
Step 5: Test Your Alerts (Seriously, Don’t Skip This)
So many teams set up alerts and assume they work. Don’t be that team.
- Use Kular’s “Send Test Alert” button—actually check your Slack/email/webhook.
- Trigger a dummy pipeline failure (if you can) to see what the real alert looks like.
- Make a small config change to see if change alerts trigger.
What to look for:
- Do alerts show up where you expect?
- Is the message clear? (Not just “Something happened”—but what, where, and when)
- Are there useless details or missing info?
If you’re missing info, tweak your alert templates (Kular usually lets you customize the message).
Step 6: Tune, Tweak, and Avoid Alert Fatigue
The first week is about learning what’s helpful and what’s just noise.
- Too many alerts? Dial back the triggers or add filters (e.g., only alert on failures, not warnings).
- Missing something important? Add triggers for those specific cases.
- Wrong people getting pinged? Check your routing logic.
Don’t be shy about turning off alerts if they aren’t useful. If people start ignoring them, they’re worse than useless.
Honest Pros and Cons of Kular’s Alerting
What works: - Setup is pretty straightforward for common destinations (Slack, email). - Granular rules let you target just the alerts you care about. - Webhook support means you can get creative with custom workflows.
What doesn’t (or isn’t worth the time): - Alert customization is a bit clunky—if you want pretty, branded messages, prepare to wrestle with templates. - Mobile push notifications aren’t currently supported (as of early 2024)—so don’t count on your phone buzzing. - Some integrations (like PagerDuty) can be brittle if you don’t map things carefully.
Ignore this: - The “all activity” feed. It’s a firehose. Don’t try to turn this into alerts—it’s not what it’s for.
Pro Tips for Making Alerts Actually Useful
- Set quiet hours (if your team isn’t 24/7). No one wants a 3am ping for a low-priority job.
- Document your alert rules somewhere your team can find them.
- Review alert performance every month. Are they helping? Or is everyone ignoring Slack?
- Pair alerts with runbooks. If you get a failure alert, include a link to “what to do next” so people aren’t guessing.
Keep It Simple—And Iterate
Don’t fall into the trap of building an alerting Rube Goldberg machine. Start with the alerts you know you need. Test them. Tune them. Add more only when you’re sure they’ll help. Kular gives you a lot of options, but the best alert is the one your team actually sees—and acts on.
Set it up, check that it works, and move on. You’ve got bigger fish to fry.