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Capacity breach alerts and agent CSAT auto-flag handle the two biggest “you need to know NOW” cases out of the box. Custom alerts let you define your own thresholds for any of the eight signals.

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Out-of-the-box alerts

These fire from Slack without any setup:
  • Capacity breach alert — when your weeks-to-breach drops to 8 or fewer, with a 24h cooldown. Wired in Slack delivery.
  • Agent CSAT auto-flag — when an agent’s CSAT trajectory sustains falling 3+ weeks with a ≥2pp drop. Wired in Slack delivery.
Both fire event-driven as of wave 4: the moment a metric write (manual save, Intercom refresh, CSV import) crosses the threshold, Forepost evaluates and posts. The hourly cron still runs as a safety net but most users will see alerts within seconds of a real change.

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Defining your own alerts

For everything else, custom alert rules let you say “ping me when X is above/below N”.

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Available metrics

MetricDirection that matters
CSATusually lt 80 (“ping me below 80%“)
Volumeusually gt 1500 (“ping me on a spike”)
First responsegt 4 (hours)
AI deflectionlt 50 (“ping me if deflection collapses”)
Open ticketsgt 300 (“ping me on a queue blowout”)
Agent utilisationgt 85 (“ping me when the team’s at the cliff”)
Backlog agegt 14 (days, “ping me on forgotten issues”)
One-touch resolutionlt 50 (“ping me on efficiency drops”)

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Cooldown

Each rule fires at most once every 6 hours. Same metric crossing the threshold twice in a day is one alert, not two. This is shorter than the breach/agent cooldown because user-defined rules tend to be “I want to know now” rather than “warn me sparingly.”

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How to add a rule

Settings → Delivery → Custom alerts. The section lists your existing rules and gives you a small form to add a new one: metric dropdown, comparator (< or >), threshold, optional label. Add appends it to your list. Each rule shows last fired when it’s posted to Slack at least once. Delete a rule by clicking Delete on its row. The API is also available directly: 
POST   /alert-rules                  # create
GET    /alert-rules                  # list
PATCH  /alert-rules/:id              # update (enabled, threshold, label)
DELETE /alert-rules/:id              # delete

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Why these rules don’t go via email

Custom alerts are Slack-only. Email is a poor medium for “right now” notifications; if Slack delivery isn’t configured for your workspace, alerts won’t fire even if a rule is enabled. The capacity breach + agent CSAT alerts have the same constraint.

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What custom alerts can’t do (yet)

  • Window-based comparators. “CSAT dropped 5pp in 24h” isn’t possible yet — only absolute “lt”/“gt” thresholds. The trajectory math already exists for the Weekly Watch; surfacing it as a rule type is a follow-up.
  • Email/webhook delivery. Slack only.
  • Per-agent rules. Rules evaluate the workspace-level metric, not per-agent. For per-agent CSAT decline, the built-in auto-flag already handles it.

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Privacy

Alert rules live in the same D1 row scope as your workspace. No external service sees them. Slack-posted alerts use your existing incoming webhook (the same one the Daily Brief uses), so no new permission is required.