How To Add Alerts In Azure Function Apps

One of the key things when working with any job that runs is that I want to know when the job fails. If I do not have this and I assume that the data is always where I could fall into a situation where there is missing data that I cannot get back. I’ve been fiddling with a better way to receive a notification from an Azure Function that has encountered an exception.

There are probably a few approaches to doing this, some that involve code others that do not. My first choice is to try to take the no-code or low-code approach.

Below explains how to create an alert with a notification email if an Azure Function App fails.

Step 1: Navigate to your function app

Step 2: Go to Alerts

Step 3: Click New alert rule

Step 4: Click on the default resource selected, which has to be changed.

Step 5: Select the application insights associated with the function app

Step 6: Under Conditions choose “Custom log search”

Step 7: Fill in the query used for evaluation, and other data, then click “Done”

Step 8: Click on Add action groups and Create action groups

Step 9: Select the action group which you have created

Step 10: Fill in the details, choose “Email/SMS message/Push/Voice” as the notification type and enter the name of the recipient

Step 11: Customize the email subject and click “Create alert rule” …. now the rule is live

Summary:

Now, every 1 day the rule will run, if there are any exceptions, an email will be sent. An alert is always based on a query on the telemetry. If we can formulate a query revealing bad behaviours, we can setup an alert on those behaviours.

This is part of the automation of a solution. We do not want to wait for our end users to discover that our site is slow or that some operations are failing. We want to be pro-active. For that, we need visibility and alerts are a great way to make us aware of what is going on.

Of course, alerts are not the only tool at our disposal. Plots & dashboard can also help. In our case, we could have plotted the success rate of the function.

Thanks for reading!

Shubham Kokane
Data Engineer
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