Canvas threshold alerts

Canvas threshold alerts let you know when something in a Canvas isn’t going as planned, so you can catch a stalled journey or an unexpected drop-off before it affects your customers.

Set a volume threshold for user entries or messages sent, and Braze notifies you by email or webhook if that threshold is crossed. You can also create multiple alerts for the same Canvas—for example, one alert for user entries and another for messages sent.

Not sure where to start? Operator can walk you through how to set up a Canvas threshold alert.

Step 1: Create an alert

Alerts are set at the Canvas level, and you can configure them for both active and draft Canvases. To open the Manage Alerts page for a Canvas, either:

• Go to Messaging > Canvas, and select Manage alerts from the context menu for an individual Canvas
• For active Canvases, open Canvas Analytics and select Manage alerts.

From the Manage Alerts page, select Configure alert to create a new alert.

Step 2: Name your alert and select a Canvas

Give your alert a name and confirm the Canvas it applies to.

Step 3: Set alert rules

Alert rules define the threshold that triggers a notification. You can build rules using two metrics:

• User entries: Number of users who entered the Canvas
• Messages sent: Number of messages sent from the Canvas

For each rule, choose a comparison (less than or more than) and a volume threshold. For example, a rule for “User entries less than 3,000” flags a Canvas that’s normally reaching thousands of users but has suddenly stalled—a sign of an upstream audience or entry issue worth investigating.

You can group multiple rules together and combine rule groups with AND or OR logic to build more specific alert conditions.

Step 4: Set the alert schedule

Define how often your alert rules are checked. You can set the check frequency anywhere from 3 to 12 hours (in 1-hour increments), or every 24 hours. Once activated, an alert continues checking on this schedule for as long as the alert and its associated Canvas is active.

Step 5: Set up notifications

Choose who should be notified when an alert rule is met, and how they’re notified:

• Email: Add one or more recipient email addresses
• Webhook: Enter the webhook URL to notify, and optionally add custom request headers required by your webhook destination

You can enable one or both notification methods for a single alert.

Webhook alerts are useful for routing notifications to external platforms, such as a Slack channel—for more, see Slack’s documentation for sending messages using incoming webhooks. Each webhook notification includes a payload with the Canvas name, the alert’s metric, the threshold direction, the value that triggered the alert, and a direct link to the Canvas.

Step 6: Save your alert

Review your alert rules, schedule, and notification settings in the summary panel, then select Save alert.

Step 7: Activate the alert

Saving an alert doesn’t activate it. To turn it on, go to the Manage Alerts page and use the Status toggle for your alert. An alert stays active until you deactivate it or until its associated Canvas is no longer active. The Alerts Configured column on the Canvas page shows a bell icon for any Canvas with at least one saved alert.

Considerations

• Draft Canvases: You can set up a threshold alert for a Canvas that’s still in draft, but the alert won’t start checking against your rules until the Canvas launches.