Configure templates

Grafana OnCall integrates with your monitoring systems using webhooks with JSON payloads. By default, these webhooks deliver raw JSON payloads. Grafana OnCall applies a pre-configured alert template to modify these payloads into a more human-readable format. These templates are customizable, enabling you to format alerts and notify different escalation chains based on alert content.

Understand your alert payload

Alerts received by Grafana OnCall contain metadata as key-value pairs in a JSON object.

All alerts and alert groups in Grafana OnCall contain the following fields.

Title
Message
Image Url
Grouping Id
Resolved by source
Acknowledged by source
Source link

The following is an example of an alert initiated by Grafana Alerting and received by Grafana OnCall:

{
  "dashboardId": 1,
  "title": "[Alerting] Panel Title alert",
  "message": "Notification Message",
  "evalMatches": [
    {
      "value": 1,
      "metric": "Count",
      "tags": {}
    }
  ],
  "imageUrl": "https://grafana.com/static/assets/img/blog/mixed_styles.png",
  "orgId": 1,
  "panelId": 2,
  "ruleId": 1,
  "ruleName": "Panel Title alert",
  "ruleUrl": "http://localhost:3000/d/hZ7BuVbWz/test-dashboard?fullscreen\u0026edit\u0026tab=alert\u0026panelId=2\u0026orgId=1",
  "state": "alerting",
  "tags": {
    "tag name": "tag value"
  }
}

Map payloads to OnCall fields

Each field of an alert in OnCall is mapped to the JSON payload keys.

Grafana OnCall converts the JSON payload to specific alert fields. For example:

{{ payload.title }} -> Title
{{ payload.message }} -> Message
{{ payload.imageUrl }} -> Image Url

Behavioral mappings include:

{{ payload.ruleId }} -> Grouping Id
{{ 1 if payload.state == 'OK' else 0 }} -> Resolve Signal

Types of templates

Alert templates allow you to format any alert fields recognized by Grafana OnCall. You can customize default alert templates for all the different notification methods.

Note
For conditional templates, the output should be True to be applied, for example {{ True if payload.state == 'OK' else False }}

Routing template

Routing templates determine how alerts are routed to different escalation chains based on alert content.

These are conditional templates, output should be True.

Appearance templates

Appearance templates customize how alerts are displayed across various platforms, including the web, Slack, MS Teams, SMS, phone calls, emails, and mobile app push notifications.

You can use appearance templates to define Title, Message, and Image URL depending on the notification method.

Title, Message, Image URL for Web
Title, Message, Image URL for Slack
Title, Message, Image URL for MS Teams
Title, Message, Image URL for Telegram
Title for SMS
Title for Phone Call
Title, Message for Email
Title, Message for push notifications

Behavioral templates

Behavioral templates control alert behaviors such as grouping, auto-resolution, and acknowledgment.

Grouping Id: Applied to every incoming alert payload after routing. Determines how alerts are grouped.
Autoresolution: Automatically resolves alert groups with a status of Resolved by source (conditional template).
Auto acknowledge: Automatically acknowledges alert groups with a status of Acknowledged by source (conditional template).
Source link: Customizes the URL link provided as the alert’s source.

Tip
As a best practice, add Playbooks, useful links, or checklists to the alert message.

Integration templates

Integration templates are applied to alerts that originated from a specific integration to define alert rendering and behavior.

Grafana OnCall provides pre-configured default Jinja templates for supported integrations. For any monitoring system not available in the Grafana OnCall integrations list, configure a Webhook integration and configure your templates as needed.

Edit templates

Open the Integration page for the desired integration.
Navigate to the Templates section and click Edit to see previews of all templates for the integration.
Select the template to edit and click Edit. The template editor will open with three columns: example alert payload, the template itself, and the rendered result.
Choose a Recent Alert group to see its latest alert payload. Click Edit to modify this payload.
Alternatively, click Use custom payload to write your own payload and see its rendering.
Press Control + Enter in the editor to view suggestions.
Click Cheatsheet in the second column for inspiration.
For messenger templates, click Save and open Alert Group in ChatOps to see how the alert renders in the messenger. Note: The alert group must exist in the messenger to preview the template.
Click Save to save the template.