---
title: Text & Email Alerts (Notifications)
description: Step-by-step guide to configuring Redash Alerts for SMS and email notifications, including JSON body formatting, distribution lists, and template variables.
---

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1. [Sitemetric Knowledge Base](https://go.sitemetric.com/sitemetric-knowledge-base?hsLang=en-us)
2. [Notifications & Messaging](https://go.sitemetric.com/sitemetric-knowledge-base/notifications-messaging?hsLang=en-us)
3. [How-To Guide](https://go.sitemetric.com/sitemetric-knowledge-base/notifications-messaging?hsLang=en-us#how-to-guide)

# Text & Email Alerts (Notifications)

## Configuring Redash Alerts to send SMS text and email notifications using JSON-formatted bodies

It is possible to generate text messages by utilizing Redash Alerts.

The recipients can be configured in two ways:

1. a single phone number or a predefined list of phone numbers
2. a Distribution List or collection of Distribution Lists

It is preferable to use a Distribution List so that the members can be managed outside of Redash. Also, if an “invalid” phone number is given, there is no feedback that the message wasn’t properly delivered.

> ⚠️ **ALERTS DON’T WORK WELL WITHOUT SCHEDULED QUERIES** and **SCHEDULED QUERIES DON’T WORK WITH QUERIES THAT HAVE PARAMETERS.** Pay attention to this. Save yourself a headache.

# Setup

Using an existing Redash Alert, add an Alert Destination with the name “Sitemetric Prod”.

!Screenshot 2025-02-07 at 3.30.48 PM.png

Configure the Alert and ensure the Template is set to “Use custom template”.

!Screenshot 2025-02-07 at 3.32.17 PM.png

The \*Subject\* can be set, but it does not appear in the text message. For example,

```
Sitemetric Alert - 
```

The most important part of the setup is the \*Body\*. There is a specific format and information that must be present in order for the text message to be sent successfully.

## Body Format

The body must be a JSON formatted string. It can either be an array of objects or a single object. In the case of an array, then each element is treated as a separate text message. For example, if the Alert is based on a query that returns multiple rows, and for each row there needs to a text message, then the body should be an array of these event objects.

> Note: for valid JSON formatting, an array of objects is comma separated.

An alert body should look like:

```
{
  "siteId": "",
  "list": "",
  "to": "",
  "msg": ""
}
```

or

```
[
  { ... },
  { ... },
  ...
  { ... }
]
```

- ‘msg’ is the body of the text message.
- 'siteId' is used for the outgoing phone number.

The body of the message will automatically be prepended with the site name:

- e.g. 0506 Kennedy School: Coakley & Williams
- 'siteId' & 'msg' are required.
- 'list' can be a single string or array of strings (comma separated). The values should be distribution list ids.
- 'to' can be a single string or array of strings (comma separated). The values are phone numbers.

> Note: 'list' and 'to' are optional, but one of them must be present.

> Note: the ‘to’ phone numbers must be formatted as **+15551112222**

## Redash Template Variables

Redash has built in template variables which can be utilized to dynamically format the body.

For example,

```
{
```

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