---
title: Alerts in Telegram
order: 8
description: Send BxLens alerts and reports to a Telegram chat, group or channel with a bot made by BotFather, and find the chat id.
icon: lucide:send
---

# Alerts in Telegram

A Telegram channel in BxLens sends alerts and reports to a chat, a group or a Telegram channel through a **bot** that you make. It needs **BoxLang+**.

## 1. Make the bot

1. In Telegram, open a chat with [@BotFather](https://t.me/BotFather) and send `/newbot`.
2. Choose a name and a user name that ends in `bot` (for example `acme_bxlens_bot`).
3. BotFather answers with the **bot token**, which looks like `123456789:AAH...`. Anyone who has it controls the bot, so treat it like a password.

## 2. Find the chat id

- **A chat with you:** open the chat with your bot and press **Start** (a bot cannot write to you before that), then send it any message. Open `https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/getUpdates` in a browser, with your token, and read `message.chat.id`. It is a number such as `123456789`.
- **A group:** add the bot to the group, send a message in it and read `getUpdates` the same way. The id is negative, such as `-1001234567890`.
- **A Telegram channel:** add the bot as an administrator who may post. A public channel can use its name, `@yourchannel`. A private one has an id that starts with `-100`.

The chat id is not a secret and is kept with the other settings.

## 3. Add the channel in BxLens

1. Open **Settings, Notifications, Channels** and press **+ Add channel**.
2. Choose **Telegram**, give it a name, paste the **bot token** (write only, stored encrypted, never shown again) and enter the **chat id**.
3. Choose the alerts, the lowest severity and the reports, press **Save**, then **Send test**.

## What the message looks like

Bold heading with an icon (a red circle for critical, an orange one for a warning, a check mark for resolved), the server, severity and time, the sentence that says what is wrong, the facts, and an **Open in BxLens** link when `console.publicUrl` is set. The message is sent with `parse_mode` HTML, so BxLens escapes `&`, `<` and `>` in all text from your servers. The text is at most 4096 characters; a longer one is cut with three dots before it is escaped.

## Good to know

- BxLens calls `https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/sendMessage` and nothing else. The host cannot be changed.
- The token is part of that address, so it is never put in a log line, an error message or the audit log.
- Telegram answers 429 when you send too many messages to one chat. BxLens tries again after 5 minutes and sends at most `maxPerHour` messages an hour to a channel.
- If Telegram says `chat not found`, the bot has not been started in that chat or the id is wrong.

See [Notifications](../console/notifications.md#channels) for how alerts are routed.