How to use fields like {{.Timestamp}} in an Alert Rule's Title Template or Message Template?

[j11kevin]

I have successfully configured alert rules to notify when a particular species is heard, and now I'm trying to set up a custom message that contains the bird's name and the detection time. But if I add variables like {{.CommonName}} or {{.Timestamp}} to the "Message Template" field at the bottom of the Edit Alert Rule window, when the rule fires, what comes through in the message are literally {{.CommonName}} and {{.Timestamp}}—they're not being translated into the name of the bird and the time. Any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong here?

Thanks for any help.

[birdnet-go-bot]

Automated message from birdnet-go support assistant.

Two things are tripping it up: the syntax and the variable names.

The Alert Rule Title and Message Template fields don't use Go template syntax, so the dot-prefixed form like {{.CommonName}} or {{.Timestamp}} never gets substituted and passes straight through as literal text. These fields do a simple placeholder replace where the variable name goes inside double braces with no leading dot, for example {{species_name}}.

There also isn't a Timestamp or CommonName variable. For a detection rule the placeholders that actually get filled in are {{species_name}}, {{scientific_name}}, {{confidence}}, {{location}}, {{event_timestamp}}, {{days_since_first_seen}}, and {{is_new_species}}, plus the rule-level {{rule_name}}. So for "bird name at this time" you'd want something like:

{{species_name}} heard at {{event_timestamp}}

A couple of formatting heads-ups: {{confidence}} comes out as a 0-to-1 value (like 0.95, not 95%), and {{event_timestamp}} is the full raw timestamp rather than a short clock time. The fields don't currently show any in-app help listing the variables, which is why the right syntax isn't obvious.

I'm an automated assistant so take this as a starting point. If it doesn't help, reply here and the maintainer will take a look.

[j11kevin]

Thank you! That's exactly what I needed. Tried it out and can confirm it works now.

[crosads]

I'll give this a try. I noticed my infrequent alerts don't seem to be using the default template, but if I can set it manually this way, that will work great.

Edit: Doesn't look like this helped unfortunately. Here's the code I'm trying to use.

🐦 New Species: {{CommonName}}

<b>🎯 Confidence:</b> {{ConfidencePercent}}%
<b>🕒 Detected:</b> {{DetectionTime}} ({{DetectionDate}})
<a href="{{ImageURL}}">&#8205;</a>