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Excluding tags

Excluding tags lets a channel turn away alerts that carry certain tags — even when that channel is set to receive All alerts. It's the mirror image of subscribing: instead of "only send me alerts with these tags," it's "never send me alerts with these tags."

You set it per channel and per contact method, in the same Tag-based routing section where you choose your alert tags.

Excluding tags is available on Standard plans and higher. Free and Starter plans don't have tag features (but if you ever downgrade, your existing tags are preserved — see Tags).

When to use it​

The most common reason: you have a catch-all channel that should get almost everything, but you've split a subset of alerts off to a dedicated channel and don't want to get them twice.

Say you have two rules:

  • A broad rule alerting on Watches, Warnings, and Advisories for all your locations.
  • A second rule covering the same WWAs at a subset of locations — your most important sites — tagged priority-sites.

You want the priority sites routed to a dedicated channel, and kept out of your catch-all so it doesn't fire twice for them.

Set it up like this:

  • Your dedicated channel is set to Only tagged alerts, subscribed to priority-sites.
  • Your catch-all channel stays on All alerts and excludes priority-sites.

When a Warning fires at a priority site:

  • The dedicated channel receives it (the priority-sites tag matches its subscription).
  • The catch-all channel stays quiet (it excludes priority-sites).

When a Warning fires at any other location:

  • The catch-all channel receives it (no excluded tag, and it's on All alerts).
  • The dedicated channel stays quiet (no priority-sites tag to match).

The subset goes only to the dedicated channel; everything else still reaches the catch-all. No duplicates.

Two rules to know​

These two rules decide whether an alert reaches a channel. They're also the first things to check when a channel goes quiet unexpectedly.

1. Exclude wins​

If the same tag is in both a channel's subscribed list and its exclude list, the alert is not sent. Excluding a tag always takes precedence over subscribing to it.

So a channel that both subscribes to priority-sites and excludes priority-sites will not receive priority-sites alerts. If you want a channel to receive a tag, don't also exclude it.

2. One excluded tag is enough​

An alert can carry more than one tag. If any one of an alert's tags is on the channel's exclude list, the whole alert is excluded — even if another of its tags would have matched the channel's subscription.

For example, an alert tagged both priority-sites and vip:

  • A channel that excludes priority-sites will not receive it — regardless of the vip tag.

Exclusion is about keeping noise out, so it's deliberately strict: one matching excluded tag is all it takes to hold an alert back.

Troubleshooting: my channel didn't get an alert I expected​

If a channel stayed quiet for an alert you thought it should receive, check its exclude list first.

  • Is one of the alert's tags on this channel's exclude list? If so, that's why — exclude wins, and one excluded tag is enough to hold the whole alert back, even if the channel subscribes to another of its tags.
  • Remove the tag from the exclude list (or retag the rule) if you want this channel to receive those alerts again.

If the exclude list is clear, the alert was likely held back by a different setting — check the channel's tag mode (Only tagged alerts vs All alerts), its priority filter, and quiet hours.

See also​