Automations Overview
Set up automated Slack alerts for deploy risk, incidents, PR review coverage, and more.
Koalr Automations let you trigger actions — Slack notifications, Jira issues, webhooks, and more — when engineering events meet configurable conditions. Instead of monitoring dashboards manually, you define rules once and Koalr fires them when conditions are met.
Available triggers
| Trigger | When it fires |
|---|---|
HIGH_RISK_PR | A PR's deploy risk score reaches HIGH or CRITICAL |
DEPLOY_COMPLETED | A deployment finishes successfully |
DEPLOY_FAILED | A deployment fails |
PR_MERGED | A pull request is merged |
PR_OPENED | A new pull request is opened |
COVERAGE_REGRESSION | A merged PR drops test coverage below a threshold |
CYCLE_TIME_EXCEEDED | PR cycle time exceeds your configured threshold |
REVIEW_TIME_EXCEEDED | Time to first review exceeds your configured threshold |
INCIDENT_OPENED | A new incident is created |
SCORECARD_BELOW_THRESHOLD | A scorecard score drops below a target |
SCORECARD_ABOVE_THRESHOLD | A scorecard score exceeds a target |
INITIATIVE_OVERDUE | An initiative passes its target date |
Setting up an automation rule
- Go to Automations in the sidebar
- Click New Automation
- Choose a trigger from the list above
- Configure the threshold (e.g., risk score ≥ 70, cycle time > 4 hours)
- Choose an action (Slack notification, Jira issue, webhook, etc.)
- Click Save — the rule activates immediately
HIGH_RISK_PR automation
The most commonly used automation. When enabled, Koalr posts a Slack message whenever a PR scores high or critical risk before merge.
Example Slack message:
🔴 High-risk PR detected
PR #847 — "Migrate payments to new DB schema" (by @alice)
Risk score: 78/100
Signals: large diff (+2,400 lines), DDL migration detected, Friday deploy window
Repository: payments-service
Review this PR carefully before merging → https://github.com/org/payments-service/pull/847The message includes:
- PR title and author
- Risk score and tier (high/critical)
- The top contributing risk signals
- A direct link to the PR on GitHub
Automation logs
Every automation fire is logged on the Automations page. The log shows:
- Which rule fired
- The payload values that triggered it
- Whether the Slack message was delivered successfully
- Timestamp
Use the log to diagnose false positives and tune your thresholds.
Best practices
Start with HIGH_RISK_PR — it has the highest signal-to-noise ratio and requires no threshold tuning.
Use team-scoped channels — if you have multiple teams, configure separate rules per team pointing to team-specific Slack channels rather than a single engineering-wide channel.
Tune thresholds over two weeks — if a rule fires more than 3× per day, raise the threshold. If it never fires and you know you have the problem it detects, lower it.
Managing Scorecards
Create and manage engineering scorecards to define service health standards, track compliance with weighted rules, and monitor maturity across teams.
Automation Builder
Create event-driven automation rules using a step-by-step workflow builder -- choose a trigger, add conditions, pick an action, and configure the details.