Slack notifications showing HTML tags from incidents

[Bogdan Hristovski]

Hello there!

So we are testing out Statuspage and we have created some templates for incidents. We are using HTML tags to make some parts of the text bold. Like the below example:

"<b>Next Update</b>: As the current status changes."

These work fine on the status page and in the emails, but when we receive Slack notifications, the HTML tags are showing, example below:

How can we resolve this or can we use something else so these tags are not showing? Maybe another way of doing this?

Thanks!

[Egor]

Hey Bogdan, 
Thanks for reaching out to Atlassian Community!

To avoid HTML tags appearing in your Slack notifications, you can use Markdown formatting instead of HTML tags. Statuspage supports Markdown, which is also compatible with Slack’s formatting.

Here’s how you can update your template to use Markdown:

Example:

Instead of:

<b>Next Update</b>: As the current status changes.

Use:

**Next Update**: As the current status changes.

Updated Template:

Replace all instances of HTML tags with their Markdown equivalents. For example:

• Bold: **bold text**

• Italic: _italic text_

• Code: `code text`

• Link: [Link](http://example.com)

By using Markdown formatting, your notifications will render correctly in Slack without displaying raw HTML tags.

Additional Notes:

•Make sure to test the Markdown formatting in both Statuspage and Slack to confirm it appears as expected.

•If there are any specific cases where Markdown doesn’t render correctly, you may need to adjust your formatting accordingly.

Implementing Markdown should resolve the issue with HTML tags showing in Slack notifications and provide a consistent formatting experience across different platforms.

I hope this helps! 

Best Regards,
Egor

[Bogdan Hristovski]

Hey Egor,

Thanks for replying.

I tried markdown with one of our templates but it doesn't work as well. See image below:

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Just a question: We have some parts of the About This Page with HTML formatting. Would I need to change those too for this to work for the templates? (slack and email)

Please let me know.

[Egor]

Hey Bogdan, 
You need to ensure that the formatting is compatible with both email and Slack. Unfortunately, if Markdown is not working as expected, another approach would be to remove or simplify formatting that isn’t supported in Slack notifications.

Yes, you should ensure uniform formatting across all parts of your Statuspage content, including the “About This Page” section. If you have HTML formatting there, consider converting it to plain text or basic Markdown.

For the parts of the templates that are not rendering correctly in Slack, you might need to remove or simplify the formatting. Slack supports basic formatting like bold and italic using asterisks.

By simplifying the formatting and ensuring uniformity across all sections, you should be able to avoid issues with unsupported HTML tags in Slack notifications.

Thank you,
Egor

[Tobias Vogler]

Does Statuspage really support Markdown in Incident/Maintenance messages? I just tried and it always renders **bold** _italic_ etc. as plaintext. And why would having html in the About section affect this.

Regards,

Tobias

[Shashwat Khare]

Hello @Tobias Vogler ,

This is Shashwat from Statuspage support, jumping in on behalf of Egor, as he's currently out sick.

Please note that the markdown formatting isn't supported in Statuspage Incidents and we have an outstanding feature request raised to the product for this as- STATUS-52

I've gone ahead and added your details to this feature request for the Product team.

Best,
Shashwat