| name | setting-up-cloudwatch-alarm-notifications |
| description | Sets up notification channels for CloudWatch alarms using SNS topics and subscriptions. Always use this skill when configuring alarm notifications — it creates encrypted SNS topics, configures topic policies for CloudWatch access, sets up email/SMS/webhook subscriptions, and links alarms to notification actions with proper security controls. |
| version | 1 |
Setting Up CloudWatch Alarm Notifications
Overview
Domain expertise for configuring Amazon CloudWatch alarm notification channels
using Amazon SNS topics and subscriptions. Covers creating encrypted SNS topics,
setting up subscriptions for email, SMS, and webhook endpoints, configuring
topic policies for CloudWatch access, and linking alarms to notification actions.
Set up alarm notifications
To configure notification channels for a CloudWatch alarm, follow the procedure exactly.
See CloudWatch alarm notification setup procedure.
Troubleshooting
Email notifications not received
Verify the email subscription was confirmed. Use aws sns list-subscriptions-by-topic
to check that the subscription status is "Confirmed" rather than "PendingConfirmation".
SMS notifications failing
Ensure the phone number is in E.164 format (e.g., +12345678901) and that SMS is
supported in your AWS region.
Alarm not triggering notifications
Verify the alarm has the correct SNS topic ARN in its AlarmActions using
aws cloudwatch describe-alarms, and ensure ActionsEnabled is set to true.
