Notifications

Vortex provides a notification system that sends updates across multiple channels when deployments occur.

Notifications are dispatched by the vendor/bin/vortex-notify router script. The hosting platform runs it around a deployment (from Lagoon post-rollout tasks or Acquia Cloud Hooks), not the CI deploy job.

Channels

Configure notification channels in your .env file:

.env

# Enable notification channels (comma-separated list)
VORTEX_NOTIFY_CHANNELS=email,slack,github

Available channels: diffy, email, github, jira, newrelic, slack, webhook

Global environment variables

These variables apply to all notification channels unless overridden by channel-specific settings. The full generated list of VORTEX_NOTIFY_* variables with their source scripts is in the Variables reference.

Variable	Required	Default	Location	Description
VORTEX_NOTIFY_CHANNELS	No	email	.env	Notification channels (comma-separated)
VORTEX_NOTIFY_PROJECT	No	VORTEX_PROJECT	.env	Notification project name
VORTEX_NOTIFY_SKIP	No		Hosting	Set to 1 to skip notifications

Deployment context variables

These variables provide deployment context information used by notification channels. They must be set by the hosting environment before calling the notification script.

Variable	Required	Description
VORTEX_NOTIFY_BRANCH	Yes	Git branch name
VORTEX_NOTIFY_SHA	Yes	Git commit SHA
VORTEX_NOTIFY_PR_NUMBER	No	Pull request number (empty for branch deployments)
VORTEX_NOTIFY_LABEL	Yes	Human-readable deployment label
VORTEX_NOTIFY_ENVIRONMENT_URL	Yes	URL of the deployed environment, used by the %environment_url% token
VORTEX_NOTIFY_LOGIN_URL	No	Login URL for the %login_url% token; defaults to <environment_url>/user/login
VORTEX_NOTIFY_EVENT	No	Deployment event: post_deployment (default) or pre_deployment; any other value fails the run

Branch filtering

Each notification channel can be restricted to specific branches using a VORTEX_NOTIFY_<CHANNEL>_BRANCHES variable. When set, the channel only sends notifications for deployments on the listed branches (comma-separated, exact match). When empty or unset, the channel runs on all branches.

For example, to restrict New Relic notifications to only main and staging:

VORTEX_NOTIFY_NEWRELIC_BRANCHES=main,staging

New Relic defaults to main,master,develop. All other channels default to no filter.

Message templates and tokens

Most notification channels support customizable message templates using replacement tokens:

Token	Description	Example
%project%	Project name	My Project
%label%	Deployment label	main or PR-123
%timestamp%	Current timestamp	15/11/2025 14:30:45 UTC
%environment_url%	Environment URL	https://example.com
%login_url%	Login URL	https://example.com/user/login
%deployment_log%	Collected deployment logs, when enabled

The default message template is:

## This is an automated message ##

Site %project% %label% has been deployed at %timestamp% and is available at %environment_url%.

Login at: %login_url%

Deployment log

Deployment logs are collected from a shared directory and included in notifications. Each producing script writes its own <name>.log into VORTEX_NOTIFY_LOG_DIR. vortex-provision writes provision.log when VORTEX_PROVISION_LOG=1, truncated fresh each run. When VORTEX_NOTIFY_LOG=1, the notifier collects every log in that directory, each as its own titled section. The email, Slack, Jira, and webhook channels add them to their message. The email and webhook message templates expose the collected logs as the %deployment_log% token; Slack adds them to the message attachment and Jira as a comment code block.

To include the provision log in notifications, set both VORTEX_PROVISION_LOG=1 and VORTEX_NOTIFY_LOG=1 (in .env or per environment). A single channel can be turned off with VORTEX_NOTIFY_<CHANNEL>_LOG=0 (for example VORTEX_NOTIFY_SLACK_LOG=0).

warning

Deployment logs are included verbatim. Make sure producing scripts don't print secrets, and enable the feature only for the channels and environments where exposing the full logs is acceptable.

Logs are written to VORTEX_NOTIFY_LOG_DIR (default /tmp/vortex-logs). vortex-provision creates its log directory and provision.log owner-only (700/600) on a best-effort basis; any other producing script controls the permissions of its own log file. If you point VORTEX_NOTIFY_LOG_DIR at a custom directory, make sure that location isn't readable by other users.

Variable	Required	Default	Location	Description
VORTEX_PROVISION_LOG	No	0	.env or Hosting	Set to 1 to write the provision log for collection
VORTEX_NOTIFY_LOG	No	0	.env or Hosting	Set to 1 to collect and include deployment logs
VORTEX_NOTIFY_LOG_DIR	No	/tmp/vortex-logs	.env	Directory the logs are collected from