Slack

Vortos can post a message to a Slack channel when a log record reaches a configured severity threshold. This gives your team real-time visibility into critical failures without anyone having to watch a log dashboard.

What you need

• A Slack workspace where you have permission to add apps
• A Vortos app running with vortos-logger installed

Step 1 — Create a Slack app and Incoming Webhook

1. Go to api.slack.com/apps and click Create New App
2. Choose From scratch, give it a name (e.g. my-app Alerts), select your workspace
3. In the left sidebar, click Incoming Webhooks
4. Toggle Activate Incoming Webhooks to On
5. Click Add New Webhook to Workspace
6. Select the channel that should receive alerts (e.g. #production-alerts)
7. Click Allow
8. Copy the Webhook URL — it looks like:

   https://hooks.slack.com/services/T00000000/B00000000/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Step 2 — Add the webhook URL to your environment

SLACK_ALERT_WEBHOOK=https://hooks.slack.com/services/T00000000/B00000000/XXXXXXXX

Step 3 — Configure Vortos

use Monolog\Level;
use Vortos\Logger\DependencyInjection\VortosLoggingConfig;

return static function (VortosLoggingConfig $config): void {
    $config->slack(
        webhook: $_ENV['SLACK_ALERT_WEBHOOK'] ?? '',
        minLevel: Level::Critical,
    );
};

If the webhook URL is empty or unset, the handler is silently skipped — safe to deploy with or without the env var set.

Step 4 — Choose the right threshold

// Recommended — only wake someone up when it truly matters
$config->slack(webhook: $_ENV['SLACK_ALERT_WEBHOOK'] ?? '', minLevel: Level::Critical);

Step 5 — Verify it's working

Trigger a test critical log temporarily:

$this->logger->critical('Slack test alert', ['env' => 'dev', 'test' => true]);

You should see a message appear in your configured Slack channel within a few seconds.

What the message looks like

Slack receives the log record formatted as a plain text message with the level, channel, message, and context included. It is not a rich embed — just a readable text block. For richer formatting or incident workflows, consider routing through PagerDuty or OpsGenie (which have native Slack integrations on their side).

Using Sentry and Slack together

A common pattern:

• Sentry at ERROR — captures and groups all errors for investigation
• Slack at CRITICAL — wakes someone up immediately for system failures

$config->sentry(dsn: $_ENV['SENTRY_DSN'] ?? '', minLevel: Level::Error);
$config->slack(webhook: $_ENV['SLACK_ALERT_WEBHOOK'] ?? '', minLevel: Level::Critical);

Both handlers are active simultaneously. A CRITICAL log goes to both Sentry (for context and stack trace) and Slack (for immediate visibility).

Troubleshooting

No message in Slack:

• Confirm the webhook URL is correct and the env var is set
• Test the webhook directly:

  curl -X POST -H 'Content-type: application/json' \
    --data '{"text":"Test message"}' \
    $SLACK_ALERT_WEBHOOK

• Check the log level — only the configured threshold and above are sent

Webhook URL expired or invalid:

• Go back to api.slack.com/apps, find your app, regenerate the webhook

Further reading

• Slack Incoming Webhooks documentation
• Monolog SlackWebhookHandler