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Last reviewed: November 9, 2026

Morning operations briefing

Note

Grafana Workflows is currently in public preview. Grafana Labs offers limited support, and breaking changes might occur prior to the feature being made generally available.

Every weekday morning, Grafana Assistant posts a short Slack briefing on active incidents, firing alerts, and what happened overnight.

This Grafana Workflows blueprint is in the Reports category of the Blueprints library.

Before you begin

To use this blueprint, you need:

Steps

Steps run in order from first to last. A step inside a switch branch runs only when Workflows chooses that branch.

StepIDTypeDescription
Gather the briefingbriefingassistant.promptAsks Grafana Assistant for the morning briefing. Adjust the window or add teams and services to focus on.
Post the briefingpost-briefingslack.message.postPosts the briefing with Block Kit formatting. Set channelID to your team’s channel.

For the inputs and outputs of each step type, refer to Step and trigger types reference.

Before you turn on the workflow, customize any steps that need input from you, such as a channel ID or a schedule name. Each step’s description says what to set.

Workflow definition

Save this definition as a YAML file to create the workflow with gcx, the Workflows API, or Terraform, or give it to a coding agent as an example. Replace FOLDER_UID with the UID of the folder for the workflow. Blueprints start disabled, so finish customizing the steps before you set enabled to true. For details, refer to Manage workflows as code.

YAML 
apiVersion: workflows.ext.grafana.app/v1alpha1
kind: Definition
metadata:
  name: morning-operations-briefing
  annotations:
    grafana.app/folder: <FOLDER_UID>
spec:
  name: Morning operations briefing
  enabled: false
  startWhen:
    matchingRules: []
    schedules:
      - 'CRON_TZ=America/New_York 0 8 * * 1-5'
  steps:
    - id: briefing
      type: assistant.prompt
      name: Gather the briefing
      description: Asks Grafana Assistant for the morning briefing. Adjust the window or add teams and services to focus on.
      inputs:
        prompt: |
          Prepare a morning operations briefing from Grafana IRM for ${now() - duration('16h')} to ${now()}.

          Include:
          - Incidents that are active right now, with severity and how long they've been open
          - Alert groups that are firing or acknowledged
          - Incidents and alert groups that were resolved overnight
          - Anything that looks like it needs a human today

          headline is one sentence. details is Slack mrkdwn under 2500 characters, with links where you can.
        outputSchema: |
          {
            "type": "object",
            "required": ["headline", "activeIncidentCount", "firingAlertGroupCount", "details"],
            "properties": {
              "headline": { "type": "string" },
              "activeIncidentCount": { "type": "integer" },
              "firingAlertGroupCount": { "type": "integer" },
              "details": { "type": "string" }
            }
          }
        maxRetries: '3'
    - id: post-briefing
      type: slack.message.post
      name: Post the briefing
      description: Posts the briefing with Block Kit formatting. Set channelID to your team's channel.
      inputs:
        channelID: ''
        messageText: 'Morning operations briefing: ${steps.briefing.outputs.result.headline}'
        blocks: |
          [
            {
              "type": "header",
              "text": {
                "type": "plain_text",
                "text": "Morning operations briefing"
              }
            },
            {
              "type": "section",
              "text": {
                "type": "mrkdwn",
                "text": ${json_stringify('*' + steps.briefing.outputs.result.headline + '*')}
              }
            },
            {
              "type": "section",
              "fields": [
                {
                  "type": "mrkdwn",
                  "text": "*Active incidents*\n${steps.briefing.outputs.result.activeIncidentCount}"
                },
                {
                  "type": "mrkdwn",
                  "text": "*Firing alert groups*\n${steps.briefing.outputs.result.firingAlertGroupCount}"
                }
              ]
            },
            {
              "type": "divider"
            },
            {
              "type": "section",
              "text": {
                "type": "mrkdwn",
                "text": ${json_stringify(steps.briefing.outputs.result.details)}
              }
            }
          ]

How it works

This section explains when the workflow runs and how its steps work together.

When it runs

This blueprint runs on the schedule CRON_TZ=America/New_York 0 8 * * 1-5.

How the steps fit together

These notes cover how the steps connect and which Workflows behaviors the blueprint relies on.

  • Schedule trigger at 8:00 AM New York time on weekdays (CRON_TZ prefix, adjusted for daylight saving time).
  • The assistant.prompt step asks Grafana Assistant to summarize the current state from Grafana IRM and return JSON that matches outputSchema.
  • The Slack step sends Block Kit blocks instead of plain text.
  • blocks is a JSON string, so assistant output is inserted with json_stringify(), which quotes and escapes it, to keep the blocks valid whatever the text contains.
  • messageText is still set, because Slack uses it as the notification fallback.
  • Customize the schedule and timezone, the time window, the prompt, and the Slack channel.

Next steps