What is a channel?
A channel is a way alerts reach the team. Channels are used in notification policies: step one might be the team’s Telegram group and, if nobody acknowledges, a call to the on-call person.
Create with the wizard
Console → Monitoring → Alerts and on-call → Channels → “New channel”. Three steps: the kind, the connection with a guide for that kind, and a test and name. “Send a test message” shows before saving whether it arrives and, if not, why.
Channel cards
Each channel shows its last delivery, message count and the policies that use it; a channel no policy uses is flagged. The switch on the card turns it off for a while.
Security
Tokens, keys and passwords are stored encrypted and never sent back to the browser; when editing, leaving them untouched keeps the stored value.