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By the end of this guide, you’ll have validated that your alert channels deliver correctly, your notification policies match as expected, and the full incident-to-notification pipeline works.
  • At least one alert channel — see First alert
  • At least one notification policy

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Three levels of testing

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Level 1: Test individual channels

Verify each channel’s configuration sends a test message:
This sends a sample notification and reports success or failure. Test every channel — misconfigured webhook URLs and expired tokens are the most common causes of missed alerts.

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Level 2: Dry-run notification policies

Test that your match rules evaluate correctly without creating a real incident:

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Level 3: End-to-end with a failing monitor

Create a monitor designed to fail and trace the full pipeline:
1

Create a test monitor

2

Wait for the incident

With default incident policy settings (2 consecutive failures), an incident should be confirmed within about 1 minute. List incidents and look for one with status CONFIRMED:
3

Verify notifications

Check that the expected notifications arrived at your channels. Also verify via the API:
Each dispatch shows the channel, delivery status, and timestamp.
4

Test resolution notifications

Resolve the incident and verify resolution messages arrive:
5

Clean up

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Troubleshooting

Check that your notification policy actually matches the incident. Review match rules — an empty matchRules array (catch-all) is the safest starting point for testing.
The incident may be suppressed by an active maintenance window or resource group suppression. Check:
Check the delivery history for the channel:
Common causes: expired webhook URL, revoked API key, rate limiting from the destination.
If requireAck is set on a step and someone acknowledged, the chain stops. Check dispatch acknowledgment status. Also verify the delayMinutes value — the chain waits that long before advancing.

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Next steps

Alert channels

Channel types and delivery behavior.

Notification policies

Match rules, priority, and evaluation order.

Tiered escalation

Build multi-step escalation chains.