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Notifications

Overview

The orchestrator can send alerts when backups succeed or fail. Notifications are delivered through channels — reusable connection configurations that can be bound to any number of instances. Two channel types are supported:

  • SMTP — email via any standard SMTP server (Gmail, Outlook, Mailgun, your own Postfix, etc.)
  • Telegram — instant message to a bot chat or group

Creating a Channel

Navigate to Channels and click + Add Channel. Choose the type, fill in the connection details, and click Test to send a verification message before saving.

SMTP Channel

Field Example Notes
Name Mailgun Production Display name
Host smtp.mailgun.org Hostname or IP
Port 587 Standard: 587 (STARTTLS) or 465 (SSL)
Username postmaster@mg.example.com SMTP auth user
Password — Stored encrypted at rest
Use TLS ✓ Enables STARTTLS on port 587
From address backup@example.com Envelope and display From

Password storage

SMTP passwords are stored in the database Fernet-encrypted. The encryption key lives at /data/secret.key. Back this file up — without it, stored credentials cannot be decrypted.

Telegram Channel

Field Example Notes
Name Ops Alerts Display name
Bot Token 7123456789:AAF… From @BotFather
Chat ID -1001234567890 Group or user ID

To get a chat ID: add your bot to the group, send any message, then visit https://api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/getUpdates and look for "chat":{"id":…}.

Binding a Channel to an Instance

Channels must be explicitly bound to instances. This lets you, for example, send Gmail alerts for one customer's instance but Telegram alerts for another.

  1. Open the Instance Detail page
  2. Scroll to Notification Bindings
  3. Click + Bind Channel
  4. Select the channel and configure:
Option Default Description
On success off Send when a run completes with status success or verified
On failure on Send when a run completes with status failed or verify_failed

You can bind the same channel multiple times to the same instance with different event toggles — though in practice one binding is usually sufficient.

Notification Content

Email (SMTP)

Each email is sent as HTML with a responsive layout styled in the Odoo color palette. The subject line follows this pattern:

[Odoo Backup] ✓ mycompany — production — 2024-03-15 02:00
[Odoo Backup] ✗ mycompany — production — 2024-03-15 02:00

The body includes:

  • Instance name and URL
  • Database name
  • Backup file size and path
  • Duration
  • Error message and traceback (failure only)
  • Link to the run in the UI

Telegram

Messages are formatted with Markdown and emojis for quick scanning:

✅ Backup succeeded
Instance: mycompany (https://erp.mycompany.com)
DB: production
Size: 142 MB  Duration: 47s

❌ Backup failed
Instance: mycompany
DB: production
Error: Connection refused (host=db, port=5432)

Password Reset Emails

The SMTP channel configured in Settings → Password recovery is also used to send password reset tokens. This is a separate use from the backup notification bindings — you don't need to bind it to any instance for password reset to work.

Disabling All Notifications for an Instance

On the Instance Detail page, toggle Notifications enabled off. This suppresses all delivery for that instance regardless of individual binding settings. Use this during maintenance windows to avoid alert storms.

Troubleshooting

Test email not arriving

  1. Check the channel's test result — it shows the SMTP response code.
  2. Verify your SMTP credentials by logging in with a mail client.
  3. Check your spam folder; some providers flag automated senders.
  4. For Gmail, you must use an App Password (not your account password) and enable "Less secure app access" or OAuth2.

Telegram messages not delivered

  1. Confirm the bot is a member of the group (for group chat IDs).
  2. Send /start to the bot in a private chat before the first message.
  3. Verify the chat ID with the getUpdates API — the sign matters (-100… for supergroups).

Notifications delayed

Notifications run on the notifications Celery queue. If the worker is overwhelmed by backup tasks, notifications queue up. Scale the worker or dedicate a separate worker to the notifications queue:

celery -A app.tasks.celery_app worker -Q notifications --concurrency=2