How to Set Up Google Chat Alerts in Trackz

Overview

The Google Chat integration posts a rich cardsV2 message to a space of your choice whenever Trackz fires an alert — downtime detected, SSL certificate expiring, SMTP failure, or performance regression. Each alert card shows a Trackz-branded header, the alert message, and the metadata key/value pairs (target name, URL, response code, etc.) so your team can triage at a glance without opening the dashboard.

Prerequisites

• A Google Workspace (or personal) Google Chat space where you can manage webhooks
• A Trackz account on any paid plan (integrations are not included on the Free plan)

Step 1: Create an Incoming Webhook in Google Chat

1. Open Google Chat and navigate to the space where you want to receive alerts.
2. Click the space name at the top of the conversation to open the space details.
3. Choose Apps & integrations → Webhooks → Add webhook.
4. Give the webhook a name (e.g., Trackz Alerts) and optionally upload an avatar URL.
5. Click Save.
6. Copy the webhook URL — it looks like https://chat.googleapis.com/v1/spaces/<space_id>/messages?key=<key>&token=<token>. Keep it handy for the next step.

Step 2: Add the Integration in Trackz

1. In your Trackz dashboard, go to Settings → Integrations.
2. Click Add Integration.
3. Select Google Chat from the integration picker.
4. Enter a name for this integration (e.g., #alerts space).
5. Paste the webhook URL you copied from Google Chat into the Webhook URL field.
6. Click Connect.

The integration will appear in your list with a green Active badge.

Trackz validates that the URL begins with https://chat.googleapis.com/. URLs from any other domain will be rejected.

Step 3: Assign Alerts to Monitors

Integrations receive alerts from all monitors in your workspace by default. If you want fine-grained control, use the Webhook integration type instead, which supports per-event filtering.

Testing Your Integration

1. In Settings → Integrations, click on your Google Chat integration row to open the detail page.
2. Click Send test.
3. Within a few seconds, a test card should appear in your Google Chat space.
4. The card will show a sample alert title, message, and metadata fields.

If no message arrives, check the troubleshooting section below.

Alert Card Format

Trackz sends Google Chat cardsV2 payloads with the following structure:

Field	Content
header.title	Alert title (e.g., Downtime detected: api.example.com)
header.subtitle	Trackz Monitoring
header.imageUrl	Trackz logo (rendered as a circular avatar)
textParagraph	Human-readable alert message
decoratedText widgets	Key/value pairs from the alert metadata: monitor name, URL, event type, response code, etc.

If the cardsV2 payload is rejected by the Google Chat API for any reason, Trackz automatically falls back to a plain-text message containing the title, message, and metadata so you never miss an alert.

Note on color-coding: Unlike Microsoft Teams themeColor or Discord embed colors, Google Chat does not support arbitrary background colors on cards. Severity is conveyed through the alert title and metadata rather than a colored header.

Troubleshooting

No message in Google Chat after sending a test

• Confirm the webhook URL starts with https://chat.googleapis.com/ — Trackz rejects other domains at save time.
• Check that the webhook still exists: Space → Apps & integrations → Webhooks.
• Verify the space has not been archived or that the webhook has not been deleted by an admin.

Integration shows as Disabled

• Toggle the integration back to active in Settings → Integrations using the toggle button.

Cards arrive without the Trackz logo

• Some Google Workspace tenants restrict outbound image fetches in Chat. The card will still render correctly without the avatar — only the circular image area will appear blank.

Webhook was deleted or rotated in Google Chat

• Delete the integration in Trackz and create a new one with the new webhook URL. Webhook URLs cannot be edited in place to avoid drift between the configured webhook and the saved configuration.