Documentation Grafana Cloud Alerts and IRM IRM Notify responders Phone and SMS

Phone and SMS notifications

Set up phone calls and SMS notifications in Grafana IRM to receive notifications about alert groups and incidents. While the Grafana IRM mobile app with push notifications is the recommended primary notification method, phone calls and SMS serve as valuable backup options, especially for critical alerts.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following:

• A Grafana Cloud account with access to Grafana IRM
• A phone number that can receive SMS messages or phone calls for verification
• Access to your Grafana Cloud profile settings

Grafana IRM supports phone calls and SMS to most countries by default. Refer to the Supported countries and limitations section for specific exceptions and requirements.

Verify your phone number

You must verify your phone number with Grafana IRM before you can add phone or SMS notifications to your notification rules.

Follow these steps to verify your phone number:

1. Navigate to the IRM tab of your Grafana Cloud Profile
2. Select Phone verification
3. Enter your phone number in E.164 format (refer to Phone number format)
4. Choose how you want to receive your verification code:
   • Click Send verification code to receive the code by SMS.
   • Click Call to get the code to receive the code through an automated phone call.
5. Enter the verification code to complete verification.

You only need to complete one of these methods to verify your number — either SMS or a phone call, not both.

Phone number format

To verify your phone number in Grafana IRM, you must enter it using E.164 format, an international standard for phone numbers. If your number isn’t formatted correctly, IRM can’t send you a verification code.

E.164 format uses the following structure:

• Start with a plus sign (+)
• Follow with your country calling code
• Then your area code and local number, with no spaces, parentheses, or dashes

Format examples

Manually verify a user’s phone number

If a user can’t complete either self-service verification flow — SMS or phone call — for example, because they aren’t receiving the verification code, an administrator can manually mark the number as verified.

To manually verify a user’s phone number:

1. Navigate to IRM > Users and select the user.
2. Open the Overview tab.
3. In the Phone connector, click Mark as verified.

IRM verifies the phone number and sends the user an SMS confirmation.

If the user had a previously verified phone number, IRM also sends an SMS to that number to notify them it’s been disconnected.

For more information about the User Settings Admin role, refer to User roles and permissions.

Add phone notifications to your notification rules

After verifying your phone number, you can add phone calls and SMS to your notification rules:

1. Navigate to the IRM tab of your Profile
2. Click Notification rules
3. Edit either your Default notification rules or Important notification rules
4. Click Add notification step
5. Select Notify by and choose either SMS or Phone call
6. Set the appropriate timing
7. Click Save

For more information about configuring notification rules, refer to Configure notification rules.

Improve phone and SMS notification delivery

Your mobile device settings can affect how reliably phone call and SMS notifications from Grafana IRM reach you. The following settings help make sure notifications get through and stand out on your device.

Sync IRM phone numbers to your contacts

With the IRM mobile app, you can sync the phone numbers used by Grafana IRM to your mobile device’s contacts. This makes it easier to recognize IRM calls and optionally allow them to override Do Not Disturb (DnD) or silent mode.

When enabled, this setting creates a contact named Grafana IRM that includes all known phone numbers used by IRM to send SMS or make phone calls. The contact is managed by the mobile app and automatically updated with any IRM numbers when the app is opened.

Allow IRM contact to override Do Not Disturb

Syncing the IRM contact doesn’t automatically override DnD. To make sure IRM calls or messages come through during urgent situations, manually configure your device settings.

iOS: Enable Emergency Bypass

1. Open your Contacts and find the Grafana IRM contact
2. Tap Edit in the top-right corner
3. Tap Ringtone or Text Tone
4. Enable Emergency Bypass
5. Tap Done

This allows calls and messages from IRM to ring even when your device is in silent mode or DnD is active.

Android: Override Do Not Disturb

The process for overriding DnD on Android varies by manufacturer and version. Refer to your device settings to configure exceptions for the IRM contact.

Phone and SMS notification behavior

Grafana IRM applies default behavior to reduce notification noise and let you take action directly from a phone call. This includes how SMS messages are bundled together and how pressing a key during a phone call can acknowledge, resolve, or silence an alert group.

SMS bundling behavior

IRM reduces alert noise and distraction by bundling SMS notifications:

1. The first alert group triggers an immediate SMS notification
2. A 2-minute waiting period follows, during which additional alerts are bundled
3. After this period, a single SMS with all alert information is sent

Notifications are bundled based on their importance. Alerts from “default” and “important” notification policies are bundled separately.

Example bundled notification

If you need to be notified about 5 alert groups from 2 different integrations (3 from “Grafana Alerting” and 2 from “Health Check”), you receive:

1. An immediate notification for the first alert group
2. A bundled SMS for the remaining alerts after 2 minutes

The bundled SMS appears as:

text Copy

Grafana IRM: Alert groups #101, #102, #103 and 1 more, from stack: TestOrg, integrations: GrafanaAlerting and 1 more.

Respond to an alert during a phone call

When Grafana IRM calls you about an alert group, the call plays the alert message and then prompts you to respond using your phone’s keypad:

• Press 1 to acknowledge the alert group
• Press 2 to resolve the alert group
• Press 3 to silence the alert group for 30 minutes
• Press 4 to repeat the message

If you don’t press a key, or you press an invalid one, the call ends with the message “We didn’t receive any input. Goodbye!” The alert group’s status doesn’t change.

Voicemail doesn’t acknowledge or resolve alerts

Answering a phone call notification, including when it’s picked up by voicemail, doesn’t acknowledge, resolve, or silence the alert group by itself. IRM only takes action when it receives a keypress (1, 2, or 3) during the call. A completed call that doesn’t register a keypress only adds a “phone call … was successful” entry to the alert group’s timeline. It doesn’t change the alert group’s status or stop escalation.

If an alert group’s status changes unexpectedly after a call goes to voicemail, open the alert group details page and check its timeline to confirm what happened:

• An entry like Acknowledged/Resolved via phone call means IRM received a keypress during the call. If nobody intentionally pressed a key, your voicemail greeting or phone system may be generating DTMF tones that IRM interprets as input.
• An entry that only shows the call was successful, with no acknowledgment or resolution, means the call completed but IRM didn’t receive a keypress.

Supported countries and limitations

Grafana IRM supports phone calls and SMS to most countries worldwide through our service provider, Twilio. However, there are important considerations regarding availability and reliability.

Phone call support

Phone calls are supported for all available countries, provided that they are not restricted by the service provider.

Twilio may block phone calls to countries or phone numbers that they deem high-risk. Twilio determines country and phone number risk levels based on various factors, including:

• Historical fraud patterns in specific regions
• Unusual calling patterns or volumes
• Reports of fraudulent activity associated with specific numbers

If you experience issues receiving phone call notifications, complete the following steps:

1. Test your phone notification setup during non-critical times
2. Verify your phone number is correctly formatted (refer to Phone number format)
3. Use the IRM mobile app as your primary notification method
4. Contact support if you consistently can’t receive calls to a verified number

SMS support

IRM supports SMS notifications to all countries by default, except for the following regions that aren’t supported by our service provider, Twilio:

• Crimea (+7978)
• Cuba (+53)
• Iran (+98)
• North Korea (+850)
• Syria (+963)

If your phone number is in one of these regions, you can’t receive SMS notifications from Grafana IRM.

Source phone numbers

IRM sends phone calls and SMS notifications from specific phone numbers based on the region where your IRM instance is located. To make sure calls and messages from IRM aren’t blocked, add these numbers to your contacts.

Where supported, IRM sends SMS messages using the Grafana IRM Alpha sender ID. Otherwise, IRM uses the international long code listed in the table.

Costs and rate limits

• Costs: There are no additional costs for outgoing calls or SMS notifications
• Rate limits: There are no specific rate limits, but we reserve the right to stop sending SMS or calls in case of abnormal volume

Next steps

Now that you’ve set up phone and SMS notifications, explore these related topics:

• Configure notification rules to control when and how phone and SMS notifications are sent
• Respond to alerts to learn about all the ways you can acknowledge, resolve, and silence alert groups
• Set up live call routing to route incoming calls to the currently on-call engineer