Tallwatch sends a plain-text message to your Telegram chat using Telegram’s Bot API. Setup takes about five minutes because Telegram does not have a one-click incoming-webhook flow — you create a bot, get its token, and tell Tallwatch which chat it should post to.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.tallwatch.com/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
Before you start
- A Telegram account.
- The chat (group, channel, or DM) that should receive alerts.
Step 1: Create a bot with @BotFather
Open BotFather
Search for
@BotFather in Telegram and start a chat with it. BotFather is the official bot for managing other bots.Create a new bot
Send the command
/newbot and follow the prompts. Pick a friendly name (Tallwatch alerts) and a username ending in bot (e.g. tallwatch_alerts_bot). The username must be unique across all of Telegram.Step 2: Add the bot to your chat and get the chat ID
Telegram does not expose chat IDs through the official client UI. You need to add the bot to the chat first, then read the ID from the Bot API.Add the bot to your group or channel
Open the target group, click the group name, then Add member. Search for your bot’s username and add it. For channels, add the bot as an admin so it can post.For a direct-message chat, start a chat with the bot yourself by clicking its username and pressing Start.
Trigger a message that the bot can see
Post any message in the chat. This guarantees the bot’s update log has a recent entry to read from.
Step 3: Add the channel in Tallwatch
Pick Telegram
Select the Telegram kind. Name the channel for the audience:
Telegram on-call or Founders group.Paste the bot token and chat ID
Paste the token from BotFather into Bot token and the chat ID from getUpdates into Chat ID.
What the alert looks like
A plain-text Telegram message with:- The incident status emoji and monitor name
- Failing regions on a separate line
- The check error class and duration
- A clickable deep link back to the incident detail page in Tallwatch
Troubleshooting
`bot was kicked from the group`
`bot was kicked from the group`
Someone removed the bot from the chat. Re-add it (and as admin if it’s a channel), then send another message in the chat so
getUpdates works again.`chat not found`
`chat not found`
The chat ID is wrong or the bot was never added. Re-run
getUpdates after posting a fresh message in the target chat to get the correct ID.`Unauthorized` from the Bot API
`Unauthorized` from the Bot API
The bot doesn't see new messages in `getUpdates`
The bot doesn't see new messages in `getUpdates`
Telegram only stores the last 24 hours of updates. If you set up the bot long ago and haven’t fetched recently, old messages are gone. Post a fresh message and retry.Also: a long-poll consumer somewhere (another bot integration?) may be reading and acknowledging updates. If
getUpdates keeps returning empty, that’s why. Use ?offset=-1 to read just the latest update without acknowledging.Reference
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Channel kind | telegram |
| Required config | bot_token, chat_id |
| Send rate limit | 1 per 30 s per channel (queued, not dropped) |
| Retry policy | Up to 3 attempts on 5xx, then queued for the next 30-s slot |
| Outbound to | api.telegram.org |