Datadog alerts

Paradime integrates natively with Elementary CLI to enable you to generate report and/or send alerts using the Bolt scheduler out of the box. No additional installation required.

Elementary sends alerts to Datadog by creating incidents with detailed information about data quality issues, test failures, and model errors. Each alert becomes a structured incident in your Datadog dashboard with appropriate severity levels and metadata.

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1. Get Datadog API Credentials

To send incidents to Datadog, you'll need both an API key and an Application key.

Get your API Key

1. Log in to your Datadog account

2. Navigate to Organization Settings → API Keys

3. Click + New Key to create a new API key

4. Give it a descriptive name like "Elementary Integration"

5. Copy the API key — you'll need this later

Get your Application Key

1. In Organization Settings, go to Application Keys

2. Click + New Key to create a new application key

3. Give it a descriptive name like "Elementary Integration"

4. Copy the application key — you'll need this later

Ensure Application Key has the below permissions

1. incident_notification_settings_read

2. incident_read

3. incident_write

4. teams_read

5. user_access_read

Identify your Datadog Site

Your Datadog site depends on your region. You can check your site by looking at your Datadog URL when logged in.

Region	Site
US1 (default)	datadoghq.com
US3	us3.datadoghq.com
US5	us5.datadoghq.com
EU1	datadoghq.eu
AP1	ap1.datadoghq.com
GOV	ddog-gov.com

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2. Configure the Integration

Pass your credentials directly when running edr monitor. You should use environment variables in the Bolt command, as described here for secrets.

edr monitor \
  --datadog-api-key <your_api_key> \
  --datadog-application-key <your_application_key> \
  --datadog-site <your_site> \
  --datadog-default-severity SEV-3

Available CLI options:

Option	Short flag	Description
--datadog-api-key	-dak	Your Datadog API key
--datadog-application-key	-dapp	Your Datadog Application key
--datadog-site	-ds	Your Datadog site (e.g., datadoghq.com)
--datadog-default-severity	-dsev	Default incident severity (SEV-1 to SEV-5)

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3. Execute the CLI

Once configured, run the following command after your dbt™ runs and tests:

edr monitor \
  --datadog-api-key <your_api_key> \
  --datadog-application-key <your_app_key> \
  --datadog-site <your_site> \
  --group-by [table | alert]

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4. Per-Alert Customization via dbt™ YAML

You can override Datadog incident settings on a per-model or per-test basis directly in your dbt™ project YAML files. These settings take precedence over the global CLI defaults.

Where to add these settings

Per-alert Datadog settings live inside the alerts_config block under config: meta: in your dbt™ YAML files. They can be applied at:

• Model level — affects all alerts from that model's tests

• Test level — affects only that specific test (overrides model-level if both are set)

# models/schema.yml

models:
  - name: my_model
    config:
      meta:
        alerts_config:
          datadog_severity: "SEV-2"               # model-level default
          datadog_notification_handle: "@team-data-quality"

    columns:
      - name: user_id
        tests:
          - not_null:
              config:
                meta:
                  alerts_config:
                    datadog_severity: "SEV-1"      # test-level override — takes precedence
                    datadog_commander_uuid: "abc123-uuid-here"

Available per-alert parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
datadog_severity	string	Overrides the incident severity for this alert. Accepted values: SEV-1, SEV-2, SEV-3, SEV-4, SEV-5. Takes precedence over the CLI --datadog-default-severity flag and any status-based severity mapping.
datadog_notification_handle	string	Adds a Datadog notification handle to the incident (e.g. @team-first-response or @[email protected]). This sends a notification to the handle but does not assign them as a responder. The @ prefix is optional — Elementary adds it automatically if missing.
datadog_commander_uuid	string	Sets the incident commander for this alert. Must be a valid Datadog user UUID (not a handle). To find a user's UUID, go to Organization Settings → Users in Datadog. Overrides the global commander configured via the CLI.
datadog_incident_type_uuid	string	Sets a custom incident type for this alert. Must be a valid Datadog incident type UUID. To find incident type UUIDs, go to Incidents → Settings → Incident Types in Datadog.

datadog_commander_uuid and datadog_incident_type_uuid require UUIDs, not handles or display names. Using the wrong format will cause the incident creation to fail.

How to find the required UUIDs

User UUID (datadog_commander_uuid)

1. In Datadog, navigate to Organization Settings → Users

2. Click on the user you want to assign as commander

3. The UUID is visible in the URL: app.datadoghq.com/organization-settings/users/<uuid>

Incident Type UUID (datadog_incident_type_uuid)

1. In Datadog, navigate to Incidents → Settings → Incident Types

2. Click on the incident type you want to use

3. The UUID is visible in the URL or in the incident type details panel

Full example

# models/schema.yml

models:
  - name: payments
    config:
      meta:
        alerts_config:
          datadog_severity: "SEV-2"
          datadog_notification_handle: "@team-payments"
          datadog_commander_uuid: "f47ac10b-58cc-4372-a567-0e02b2c3d479"
          datadog_incident_type_uuid: "f0524b6b-9328-403a-a533-f701a175dff5"

    tests:
      - elementary.volume_anomaly
      - elementary.freshness_anomaly:
          config:
            meta:
              alerts_config:
                datadog_severity: "SEV-1"   # escalate freshness issues specifically

Severity precedence order

When determining the severity of a Datadog incident, Elementary applies the following precedence (highest to lowest):

1. Test-level datadog_severity in config.meta.alerts_config

2. Model-level datadog_severity in config.meta.alerts_config

3. Tag-based severity rules (if configured via CLI)

4. Status-based mapping (error → SEV-1, fail → SEV-2, warn → SEV-3)

5. CLI default --datadog-default-severity (fallback, default: SEV-3)

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Deduplication

Elementary automatically deduplicates Datadog incidents. Before creating a new incident, it checks whether an active incident already exists for the same alert. If one is found, no duplicate is created.

This means:

• Re-running edr monitor without resolving the underlying issue will not create duplicate incidents.

• Once an incident is resolved in Datadog, the next failing run will create a fresh incident.