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Alerting

Alerting helps teams monitor spend, activity, and operational signals without checking reports manually.

Use Alerting to define a monitored metric, set the condition that should trigger the alert, choose when the alert runs, and send a message through a configured notification channel when the condition is met.

Alerting is useful for cost governance, FinOps reviews, month-end monitoring, budget control, vendor oversight, and operational follow-up.

What Alerting helps you do

Use Alerting to:

  • Monitor spend and operational metrics against defined conditions

  • Trigger alerts when a threshold is crossed

  • Trigger alerts when expected data is missing

  • Run checks on a schedule or from an application event

  • Notify teams through configured channels

  • Support recurring controls for finance, IT, and FinOps teams

Alerting turns recurring checks into repeatable controls.

Access Alerting

To open Alerting:

  1. Navigate to Admin

  2. Select Alerting

The Alerting page lists configured alerts and provides access to create, manage, import, and export alert configurations.

Alerting article family

The Alerting help content is organized into focused articles.

Article

Use it for

Alerting

Understand what alerts are, when to use them, and how alerts support governance workflows

Create alerts

Create a new alert and configure the metric, condition, trigger, and notification message

Manage, Import, and Export Alerts

Edit alerts, activate or deactivate alerts, run alerts manually, review run history, delete alerts, import alerts, and export alert configurations

Use the overview page to understand the feature. Use the task pages when you need to perform a specific action.

Before you use alerts

Before creating alerts, confirm that at least one notification channel has been configured and enabled.

Alerts use notification channels to send messages when the configured condition is met. Depending on the environment setup, channels may include Microsoft Teams, Slack, or other supported destinations.

If the notification channel is missing or disabled, the alert may run but fail to notify the right team.

Alert types

Alerts can run from a schedule or from an application event.

Type

Use it when

Schedule

The alert should run at a defined cadence, such as daily, weekly, monthly, or another configured frequency

Event

The alert should run when a system event occurs, such as data being loaded

Use scheduled alerts for recurring financial or operational checks.

Use event-based alerts when the alert should respond to activity in the application.

Trigger conditions

The trigger condition defines when Yarken should send the alert.

Common condition types include:

Condition type

Use it when

Threshold

You need to alert when a metric crosses a defined value or percentage

Absence of value

You need to alert when expected data is missing

Threshold alerts are useful for spend controls, variance monitoring, and usage review.

Absence alerts are useful for data-load checks, month-end readiness, and operational controls.

Notification behavior

When an alert triggers, Yarken sends the configured message to the selected notification channel.

A good alert message should tell the recipient:

  • What changed

  • Which metric triggered the alert

  • Which period or scope is affected

  • Whether the condition relates to a threshold or missing data

  • What action the recipient should consider next

Clear messages reduce follow-up and help teams respond quickly.

Common use cases

Alerting is commonly used for:

  • Monthly spend threshold monitoring

  • Vendor spend monitoring

  • Application spend monitoring

  • Cloud spend threshold alerts

  • Month-end data-load checks

  • Spend variance follow-up

  • Budget governance checks

  • Cost pool and tower monitoring

  • FinOps operational controls

  • Notification routing for finance and IT teams

Use these practices when designing alerts:

  • Configure notification channels before creating alerts

  • Use clear alert names and descriptions

  • Keep channel messages specific and action-oriented

  • Align scheduled alerts to reporting cycles

  • Use event-based alerts for data-load dependent checks

  • Monitor only the exceptions that need action

  • Keep alert ownership clear so the right team receives and acts on notifications

Strong alert design helps teams focus on the exceptions that need action.

Troubleshooting alerts

If an alert does not behave as expected, check:

  • Whether the selected metric has data for the reporting period

  • Whether the condition type and threshold are configured correctly

  • Whether the schedule or event trigger is valid

  • Whether the notification channel is configured and enabled

  • Whether the channel message is populated

  • Whether the alert has been activated

If the alert runs but no notification is received, review the notification channel configuration first.

Next step

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