Documentation Grafana Cloud Platform Workflows Introduction

Introduction to Grafana Workflows

Grafana Workflows is a workflow engine for Grafana Cloud that lets you automate incident response, operational tasks, and cross-tool orchestration. You define workflows as a series of steps that run in response to events or on a schedule. Each step can call APIs, update incidents, transform data, or perform a variety of Slack operations.

Workflows connect to the tools you already use in Grafana Cloud. When an incident is updated, for example, a workflow can automatically assign responders, create a Slack channel, and post a summary. Scheduled workflows can run checks and send notifications on a regular cadence.

Why use Workflows

If you connect Grafana IRM, Slack, and external systems with webhooks, custom integrations, or scripts, Workflows replaces them with automation inside Grafana Cloud. You don’t need to maintain separate services to respond to events.

Workflows is most useful when you want to:

• Automatically create a Slack channel and assign a commander when a critical incident is declared.
• Page the on-call user for a team or schedule without leaving Grafana.
• Update an incident’s fields when the alert group it relates to changes state.
• Run a recurring check on an external system and post the result to Slack.

Key capabilities

• Event-driven triggers: React to incident, alert group, and on-call schedule events from Grafana IRM.
• Scheduled execution: Run workflows on a recurring cron schedule, including a specific timezone with CRON_TZ.
• Conditional logic: Use CEL (Common Expression Language) expressions to filter events, branch on conditions, and transform data between steps.
• Grafana IRM integration: Update incident fields, assign participants to roles, page users or teams, and query current on-call users directly from workflow steps.
• Slack integration: Create channels, post messages with Block Kit formatting, add bookmarks, and invite users.
• HTTP calls: Make authenticated HTTP requests to public endpoints, including webhooks and external APIs.
• Secret management: Store and reference secrets for authentication without exposing credentials in workflow definitions.

How it works

1. Define a workflow with a name, trigger conditions, and an ordered list of steps.
2. Configure triggers using event matching rules or cron schedules.
3. Add steps that perform actions. Each step has a type, an ID, and a set of inputs.
4. Connect steps using the workflow context. Outputs from earlier steps are available as inputs to later steps through CEL expressions.
5. Enable the workflow to start processing events automatically, or click Run in the editor to trigger it manually with a sample event.

Next steps

• Get started with Grafana Workflows
• Create workflows
• Configure triggers
• Use CEL expressions
• Step and trigger types reference