Send an alert

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Create alerts with Slack or email if your run crashes or with a custom trigger. For example, you can create an alert if the gradient of your training loop starts to blow up (reports NaN) or a step in your ML pipeline completes. Alerts apply to all projects where you initialize runs, including both personal and team projects.

And then see W&B Alerts messages in Slack (or your email):

How to create an alert

info

The following guide only applies to alerts in multi-tenant cloud.

If you're using W&B Server in your Private Cloud or on W&B Dedicated Cloud, then please refer to this documentation to setup Slack alerts.

There are two main steps to set up an alert:

1. Turn on Alerts in your W&B User Settings
2. Add run.alert() to your code
3. Confirm alert is set up properly

1. Turn on alerts in your W&B User Settings

In your User Settings:

• Scroll to the Alerts section
• Turn on Scriptable run alerts to receive alerts from run.alert()
• Use Connect Slack to pick a Slack channel to post alerts. We recommend the Slackbot channel because it keeps the alerts private.
• Email will go to the email address you used when you signed up for W&B. We recommend setting up a filter in your email so all these alerts go into a folder and don't fill up your inbox.

You will only have to do this the first time you set up W&B Alerts, or when you'd like to modify how you receive alerts.

2. Add run.alert() to your code

Add run.alert() to your code (either in a Notebook or Python script) wherever you'd like it to be triggered

import wandb

run = wandb.init()
run.alert(title="High Loss", text="Loss is increasing rapidly")

3. Check your Slack or email

Check your Slack or emails for the alert message. If you didn't receive any, make sure you've got emails or Slack turned on for Scriptable Alerts in your User Settings

Example

This simple alert sends a warning when accuracy falls below a threshold. In this example, it only sends alerts at least 5 minutes apart.

import wandb
from wandb import AlertLevel

run = wandb.init()

if acc < threshold:
    run.alert(
        title="Low accuracy",
        text=f"Accuracy {acc} is below the acceptable threshold {threshold}",
        level=AlertLevel.WARN,
        wait_duration=300,
    )

How to tag or mention users

Use the at sign @ followed by the Slack user ID to tag yourself or your colleagues in either the title or the text of the alert. You can find a Slack user ID from their Slack profile page.

run.alert(title="Loss is NaN", text=f"Hey <@U1234ABCD> loss has gone to NaN")

Team alerts

Team admins can set up alerts for the team on the team settings page: wandb.ai/teams/your-team.

Team alerts apply to everyone on your team. W&B recommends using the Slackbot channel because it keeps alerts private.

Change Slack channel to send alerts to

To change what channel alerts are sent to, click Disconnect Slack and then reconnect. After you reconnect, pick a different Slack channel.

FAQ(s)

Do "Run Finished" Alerts work in notebooks?

No. Run Finished alerts (turned on with the Run Finished setting in User Settings) only work with Python scripts and are disabled in Jupyter Notebook environments to prevent alert notifications on every cell execution.

Use wandb.alert() in notebook environments instead.