Allow configurability of Slack Issue Alerts to remove some information

[mfn]

Environment

SaaS (https://sentry.io/)

Steps to Reproduce

The new sentry slack notifications consume a LOT more screen space:

from

to

Is there any way to get back a more brief version which conserves more screen estate?

They really consume a lot more height now and reduce the overall visibility of the channel they're posted too.

(I suspect it's related to #61455)

Expected Result

Actual Result

Product Area

Settings - Integrations

Link

No response

DSN

No response

Version

No response

[getsantry]

Assigning to @getsentry/support for routing ⏲️

[getsantry]

Routing to @getsentry/product-owners-settings-integrations for triage ⏲️

[Dhrumil-Sentry]

HI @mfn - We released these changes to early access customers. Thanks for this feedback.

This was a tradeoff we had to make to add more context to slack. (Here's a list of GH issues being addressed by these changes: #64116)

I'd love to understand what content from the following is unnecessary for you:

• Default tags?
• Event and user counts?

One option we're considering is making this configurable so you can avoid the blocks you don't need

[span]

I agree. Our slack channel for alerts have become very chaotic since these changes. I am currently trying to find a way to revert and it seems exiting early access will do it. I did not know we were in early access, and I did not expect early access to change formatting without warning or prompting.

For our use case, we only want the bare minimum. The previous alerts contained more than enough information for us. We simply check the incoming alert, assign it, and the assignee then opens the link to dig through the error. The extra, and formatted tags, does nothing for us. We only get alerts from prod. We are always running the latest version and usually have several releases every day.

The bare bones, text only formatting, was perfect for us, although even it contained more information then we needed. Now there are so many different "things" popping out, at least my eyes cannot focus on anything. I suppose allowing customers complete control over the message with a template would satisfy mostly everyone, but would perhaps be too much work.

Perhaps a middle ground where the more detailed message can be one alternative, while there is also an option for a "minimal version", that simply warns and then allows for assignment.

[Dhrumil-Sentry]

@span Thanks a lot for this feedback- This is the approach we'll likely take before we make this generally available.

[mfn]

making this configurable so you can avoid the blocks you don't need

Yes, please.

In my experience default slack notifications across the board of different apps usually get in the way because someone deems that's their best shot and millions of customers have to live with it then next where they try their best at communication between humans.

I'd love to understand what content from the following is unnecessary for you:

• environment: this is not necessary if you route them to dedicated slack channels for e.g. prod
• level: this was previously presented as a colored line on the left -> it was perfect and didn't need a place in its own line (colors were red, gray, …)

---

Effectively, the previous versions had the following elements:

• title: exception name (e.g. the class)
• message: exception message
• misc: project short issue id, link to per-project notification settings, date
• action bar: resolve, archive, assign

Additional as mentioned, the colored line on the left, indicating the error level.

It is… perfect? Personally here I could do with the action bar behind show more, but not sure if that's technically possible.

This concludes: everything else is not necessary, which means everything else the new notification brought, which effectively means the two new lines of summary

• environment, handled, level, release
• events, state, first seen

If we remove those two, we're more or less back with the old versions, sans the colored error level indicator line on the left.

Also, it seems the new version has a separate line at the bottom? Also not necessary imho.

Every pixel saved in height is a win. Every pixel.

---

As @span summed it up succinctly

we only want the bare minimum

[Dhrumil-Sentry]

Thanks for this feedback @mfn , I'll update the issue once we have these configurations in place

[jgillard]

What's the latest on this configurability? We're not in early access (as far as I know) but have just started seeing these notifications today, and I agree with the points above that say Slack channels with these in are harder to manage now that far fewer are visible at once. I also agree that "the bare minimum" is a good thing to aim for. A lot of the new information can be found by clicking the link through to the website so is not needed by us here.

[Dhrumil-Sentry]

@nickooolas Thanks a lot for this feedback ! We'll certainly discuss this approach and comment here once we have updates

[mfn]

This really needs to be slimmed down again from the default or be made configurable. The amount of screen space wasted is just too big.

Partly this is surely is slacks fault: even their most condensed layout never reached HipChats (anyone remember? 😼) "compactness", but the new Sentry integration dial this up.

Sure they look a bit less verbose since my initial encounter, but sorry to say: this is not enough.

Thx.

[chestozo]

Is this information dynamic? (I am guessing it is not)

And like that — it can be actually misleading and anyways devs should check Sentry for the up to the moment stats to see number of users affected / events tracked.

[mfn]

The amount of screen space being taking up is still ridiculous. Partly probably slacks fault being constantly changed, but also the, for some, unnecessary amount of information displayed.

I still hope this won't get lost in all the issues :/

[gitjake]

Voting for this change. Our devops chan is now bloated with Sentry text.

I checked the related tickets and I didn't see a justification for the amount of info and real estate taken up, and since the cat is out of the bag, I'd like to see a checkbox in the settings to go back to the minimal copy.

A half-way compromise would be conserving vertical real estate by removing empty lines and packing the text together horizontally.

Example of the difference:

[xinranxiao]

Heavy plus one. We literally started looking for alternative vendors with the amount of noise from these notifications. Rollbar makes notifications configurable via template variables and the ability to remove Slack actions from the notification, which is an INSANELY useful feature.

[simion]

Came here for this. Just upgraded sentry and the amount of screen space taken by the new notifications format is insane.
I'd like to remove the row with "State" and "First seen" since I only send an error when it's first seen. The code block around the error message also takes up too much space.