---
title: "Respond to alerts in Grafana IRM | Grafana Cloud documentation"
description: "Learn how to respond to alerts in Grafana IRM."
---

> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

# Respond to alerts in Grafana IRM

When an alert is triggered in Grafana IRM, responders have multiple ways to interact with it. This topic covers the actions available for managing and resolving alerts, including acknowledging alerts, escalating notifications, and linking alerts to incidents.

## View and manage alerts

Alerts in Grafana IRM are grouped into **alert groups**, allowing responders to manage related alerts collectively. You can interact with alerts through the **Grafana UI**, **mobile app**, or your organizations integrated **messaging app** like Slack and Microsoft Teams.

### Alert group table

The Alert Group table provides an overview of all active alerts. You can:

- Sort and filter alerts based on **severity**, **team**, or **escalation policy**
- Customize columns to display relevant alert details
- View assigned responders and escalation chain progress

## Acknowledge an alert

Acknowledge (ACK) an alert to indicate that a responder is investigating the issue. Acknowledging an alert:

- Updated to alert status to Acknowledged
- Stops further escalation notifications

### Ways to acknowledge an alert

You can acknowledge an alert through:

- **The Alert group table**: Select **Acknowledge** from the drop down in the **Status** column.
- **The mobile app**: Tap **Acknowledge** from the alert feed
- **Messaging apps (Slack, Microsoft Teams)**: Use `/ack` in the relevant channel
- **API**: Use the OnCall API to programmatically acknowledge an alert

> Note
> 
> If a new alert joins an acknowledged alert group, it will not trigger escalation chain actions.

## Escalate an alert

If an alert is not acknowledged or resolved within a certain timeframe, it will escalate according to the configured escalation chain. Responders can manually escalate an alert if immediate action is needed.

### Add participants

Adding an escalation participant initiates that users notification rules. Be conscious of who is actively on-call before notifying them. Users are listed as **On-Call now** or **Not on-call**.

Manually add the necessary responders to an alert group:

1. Open the alert details for the correct alert
2. Click **+ Add participants** in the escalation participants section
3. Search or select users from the dropdown
4. Adding an escalation participant initiates that users notification rules

### Declare an incident

If the alert group requires larger effort and escalation, you can declare an incident from an active alert group.

To declare an incident from an alert group:

1. From the alert group details, click **Actions**
2. Select **Declare incident** from the dropdown
3. Fill out the Incident declaration form and click **Declare incident**

To learn more, refer to [Declare an incident](/docs/grafana-cloud/alerting-and-irm/irm/manage-incidents/declare-incident).

## Resolve an alert

Marking an alert as **resolved** indicates that the issue has been fixed. Resolved alerts:

- Stop all further notifications and escalations
- Are recorded in the alert history for future reference

### Ways to resolve an alert

- **UI**: Click **Resolve** in the alert details view
- **Mobile app**: Tap **Resolve** from the alert feed
- **API**: Programmatically resolve alerts via the OnCall API

## Manage labels on alert groups

Labels help categorize and organize alert groups for easier filtering, routing, and analysis. You can add, create, and remove labels directly from the alert group details page.

### Add existing labels

To add an existing label to an alert group:

1. Open the alert group details page
2. In the **Overview** section, find the **Assigned labels** row
3. Click the **+ Label** button
4. Search for existing labels by typing part of the key
5. Click the associated label checkbox in the dropdown to add it to the alert group

### Create and add new labels

You can create a new label directly from the alert group page by typing a `key:value` pair:

1. Open the alert group details page
2. In the **Overview** section, click the **+ Label** button
3. Type a label in `key:value` format, separated by a colon (for example, `team:infrastructure` or `severity:critical`)
4. Press **Enter** to create and assign the label

If the label key or value doesn’t exist, it will be created automatically and added to your organization’s label repository for future use.

### Remove labels

To remove a label from an alert group:

1. Open the alert group details page
2. In the **Overview** section, find the label you want to remove
3. Click the **X** button on the label to remove it

> Note
> 
> Removing a label from an alert group doesn’t delete the label from your organization’s label repository. The label remains available for use on other alert groups.

## Silence alerts

Silencing an alert prevents notifications for a specified duration without resolving the issue. This is useful for:

- Muting noisy alerts during investigation
- Avoiding unnecessary escalations for a known issue

To prevent noisy alerts during a maintenance window, refer to [Manage maintenance mode](/docs/grafana-cloud/alerting-and-irm/irm/integrations/configure-integrations/#manage-maintenance-mode)

> Note
> 
> When using the [Grafana Alerting](/docs/grafana-cloud/alerting-and-irm/irm/integrations/alert-sources/grafana-alerting) integration, keep in mind that silences in IRM are independent from those in Alertmanager. Silencing an alert group in IRM doesn’t create a corresponding silence in Alertmanager.

### Ways to silence alerts

- Set a temporary silence in the UI
- From your messaging app
- Apply a mute rule in Grafana Alerting to prevent certain alert conditions from triggering notifications

### Unsilencing alerts

When an alert group is unsilenced, we do not send a notification (e.g. publish a message in Slack in case it is configured), but the escalation chain will be restarted:

- in the escalation chain, if the user to be notified has `notify_by_slack_mentions` in their notification rules, a message will be added to the alert group tagging the user.
- if the alert group is acknowledged before the Slack mention step happens due to how a user configured their rules, no message will be posted.

## Interact with alerts using the mobile app

Responders can manage alerts on the go using the **Grafana IRM mobile app**:

- Receive push notifications for new alerts
- Acknowledge, escalate, or resolve alerts directly from the app
- View alert details and history in the alert feed

For more information about the mobile app, refer to [IRM mobile app](/docs/grafana-cloud/alerting-and-irm/irm/mobile-app/).

## Manage alerts via API

For teams using automation, the Grafana IRM API allows you to:

- Fetch active alerts and alert groups
- Acknowledge or resolve alerts programmatically
- Modify escalation chains dynamically

For more information about the API, refer to [IRM APIs](/docs/grafana-cloud/alerting-and-irm/irm/reference).

## Best practices for responding to alerts

- **Acknowledge alerts quickly** to stop unnecessary escalations
- **Use messaging app** integrations for fast interaction with alerts
- **Customize alert routing** to ensure the right responders are notified
- **Declare incidents for critical alerts** for a coordinated response.