Acknowledging alerts
Stop repeat notifications for an ongoing incident without pausing the monitor or hiding the problem.
Acknowledging says “we know, someone is on it”. Repeat notifications for that episode stop; the monitor keeps checking and its status stays honest.
What it does and does not do
| Acknowledge | Pause | Maintenance window | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Checks keep running | yes | no | yes |
| Status stays accurate | yes | no | shows MAINTENANCE |
| Counts against uptime | yes | excluded | excluded if configured |
| Repeat alerts | suppressed | none | suppressed |
| Right for | an incident you are working | planned work you did not schedule | planned work you did schedule |
Acknowledging never hides a problem. That is the point: the status page and your uptime figures continue to tell the truth while your phone stops buzzing.
How to acknowledge
From the dashboard — the Acknowledge action on the monitor, with an optional message of up to 1000 characters explaining what is happening.
From an email or chat alert — the one-click acknowledge link. It is signed, scoped to that alert episode, expires, and is safe to click twice.
Over the API
POST /monitors/<monitor-id>/acknowledgeLeave a message
The optional message is the highest-value habit here. “Known — upstream provider incident, tracking at status.provider.com” saves the next person from re-investigating, and it appears in the acknowledgement history.
GET /monitors/<monitor-id>/acknowledgmentsAcknowledging a DNS change
DNS Diff monitors use a separate action, because acknowledging there means something stronger — accepting the new answer as the baseline:
POST /monitors/<monitor-id>/dns/acknowledgeRead the new value before you accept it. This is the control that would tell you about a DNS hijack, and acknowledging it blindly is how that alert gets wasted.
Pause and resume from an alert
Alerts also carry pause and resume links.
The pause link opens a confirmation page before doing anything, and is single-use. That is deliberate: mail clients and chat apps prefetch links, and a one-click pause would let a link preview silently stop your monitoring. The acknowledge link is idempotent, so it is safe to prefetch.