# How to stop sending duplicate Slack notifications for the same error?

**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-stop-sending-duplicate-slack-notifications-for-the-same-error/151460
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Tags:** elastic-stack-alerting
**Created:** [October 8, 2018, 1:24pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-stop-sending-duplicate-slack-notifications-for-the-same-error/151460 "2018-10-08T13:24:19Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 2

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### Author: ![andres-perez](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/andres-perez/32/136461_2.png) [@andres-perez](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/andres-perez)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2018, 2:46pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-stop-sending-duplicate-slack-notifications-for-the-same-error/151460/2 "2018-10-08T14:46:39Z")

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Can you set a longer [throttle\_period](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/x-pack/current/actions.html#CO29-1)?  
I see it set to 30 minutes in your example, maybe a bigger value would be enough.

I think it's the most suitable mechanism for handling duplicate notifications.  
Maybe we can suggest to the elastic devs to implement some kind of _"forever"_ value for that parameter 😉

If that were not possible, what comes to my mind would be much more cumbersome:

- Add another search (so _chain inputs_) to obtain the results of the last execution (e.g. sort a small time range) recorded in the _.watcher-history-..._ index each time the watcher is triggered.
- Add comparison logic (so probably a script comparison) to take that values into account.

You can find related information in this question:

> [@Alert when okay](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/alert-when-okay/112707/2):
>
> Hi @acchaulk, Watcher can absolutely do this because it is just a matter of defining a condition to trigger on. If the condition passes, such as when an "error" state is detected, then you can follow up by performing any [action that is supported by Watcher](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/x-pack/6.1/actions.html). Therefore, the issue that you may be having is how to define the right condition and there are a lot of different strategies that you can employ, depending on the complexity that you are willing to endure: Create two Watches The first W…

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