Important: This documentation is about an older version. It's relevant only to the release noted, many of the features and functions have been updated or replaced. Please view the current version.

DocumentationGrafana documentationAlertsGrafana alertsContact points

Contact points

Use contact points to define how your contacts are notified when an alert fires. A contact point can have one or more contact point types, for example, email, slack, webhook, and so on. When an alert fires, a notification is sent to all contact point types listed for a contact point. Optionally, use message templates to customize notification messages for the contact point types.

You can configure Grafana managed contact points as well as contact points for an external Alertmanager data source. For more information, see Alertmanager.

Add a contact point

1. In the Grafana menu, click the Alerting (bell) icon to open the Alerting page listing existing alerts.
2. Click Contact points to open the page listing existing contact points.
3. Click New contact point.
4. From the Alertmanager dropdown, select an Alertmanager. By default, Grafana Alertmanager is selected.
5. In Name, enter a descriptive name for the contact point.
6. From Contact point type, select a type and fill out mandatory fields. For example, if you choose email, enter the email addresses. Or if you choose Slack, enter the Slack channel(s) and users who should be contacted.
7. Some contact point types, like email or webhook, have optional settings. In Optional settings, specify additional settings for the selected contact point type.
8. In Notification settings, optionally select Disable resolved message if you do not want to be notified when an alert resolves.
9. To add another contact point type, click New contact point type and repeat steps 6 through 8.
10. Click Save contact point to save your changes.

Edit a contact point

1. In the Alerting page, click Contact points to open the page listing existing contact points.
2. Find the contact point to edit, then click Edit (pen icon).
3. Make any changes and click Save contact point.

Test a contact point

For Grafana managed contact points, you can send a test notification which helps verify a contact point is configured correctly.

To send a test notification:

1. In the Grafana side bar, hover your cursor over the Alerting (bell) icon and then click Contact points.
2. Find the contact point to test, then click Edit (pen icon). You can also create a new contact point if needed.
3. Click Test (paper airplane icon) to open the contact point testing modal.
4. Choose whether to send a predefined test notification or choose custom to add your own custom annotations and labels to include in the notification.
5. Click Send test notification to fire the alert.

Delete a contact point

1. In the Alerting page, click Contact points to open the page listing existing contact points.
2. Find the contact point to delete, then click Delete (trash icon).
3. In the confirmation dialog, click Yes, delete.

Note: You cannot delete contact points that are in use by a notification policy. You will have to either delete the notification policy or update it to use another contact point.

Edit Alertmanager global config

To edit global configuration options for an external Alertmanager, like SMTP server, that is used by default for all email contact types:

1. In the Alerting page, click Contact points to open the page listing existing contact points.
2. From the Alertmanager drop-down, select an external Alertmanager data source.
3. Click the Edit global config option.
4. Add global configuration settings.
5. Click Save global config to save your changes.

Note This option is available only for external Alertmanagers. You can configure some global options for Grafana contact types, like email settings, via Grafana configuration.

List of notifiers supported by Grafana

Webhook

Example JSON body:

json Copy

{
  "receiver": "My Super Webhook",
  "status": "firing",
  "orgId": 1,
  "alerts": [
    {
      "status": "firing",
      "labels": {
        "alertname": "High memory usage",
        "team": "blue",
        "zone": "us-1"
      },
      "annotations": {
        "description": "The system has high memory usage",
        "runbook_url": "https://myrunbook.com/runbook/1234",
        "summary": "This alert was triggered for zone us-1"
      },
      "startsAt": "2021-10-12T09:51:03.157076+02:00",
      "endsAt": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
      "generatorURL": "https://play.grafana.org/alerting/1afz29v7z/edit",
      "fingerprint": "c6eadffa33fcdf37",
      "silenceURL": "https://play.grafana.org/alerting/silence/new?alertmanager=grafana&matchers=alertname%3DT2%2Cteam%3Dblue%2Czone%3Dus-1",
      "dashboardURL": "",
      "panelURL": "",
      "valueString": "[ metric='' labels={} value=14151.331895396988 ]"
    },
    {
      "status": "firing",
      "labels": {
        "alertname": "High CPU usage",
        "team": "blue",
        "zone": "eu-1"
      },
      "annotations": {
        "description": "The system has high CPU usage",
        "runbook_url": "https://myrunbook.com/runbook/1234",
        "summary": "This alert was triggered for zone eu-1"
      },
      "startsAt": "2021-10-12T09:56:03.157076+02:00",
      "endsAt": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
      "generatorURL": "https://play.grafana.org/alerting/d1rdpdv7k/edit",
      "fingerprint": "bc97ff14869b13e3",
      "silenceURL": "https://play.grafana.org/alerting/silence/new?alertmanager=grafana&matchers=alertname%3DT1%2Cteam%3Dblue%2Czone%3Deu-1",
      "dashboardURL": "",
      "panelURL": "",
      "valueString": "[ metric='' labels={} value=47043.702386305304 ]"
    }
  ],
  "groupLabels": {},
  "commonLabels": {
    "team": "blue"
  },
  "commonAnnotations": {},
  "externalURL": "https://play.grafana.org/",
  "version": "1",
  "groupKey": "{}:{}",
  "truncatedAlerts": 0,
  "orgId": 1,
  "title": "[FIRING:2]  (blue)",
  "state": "alerting",
  "message": "**Firing**\n\nLabels:\n - alertname = T2\n - team = blue\n - zone = us-1\nAnnotations:\n - description = This is the alert rule checking the second system\n - runbook_url = https://myrunbook.com\n - summary = This is my summary\nSource: https://play.grafana.org/alerting/1afz29v7z/edit\nSilence: https://play.grafana.org/alerting/silence/new?alertmanager=grafana&matchers=alertname%3DT2%2Cteam%3Dblue%2Czone%3Dus-1\n\nLabels:\n - alertname = T1\n - team = blue\n - zone = eu-1\nAnnotations:\nSource: https://play.grafana.org/alerting/d1rdpdv7k/edit\nSilence: https://play.grafana.org/alerting/silence/new?alertmanager=grafana&matchers=alertname%3DT1%2Cteam%3Dblue%2Czone%3Deu-1\n"
}

Webhook fields

Body

Alert

Removed fields related to dashboards

Alerts are not coupled to dashboards anymore therefore the fields related to dashboards dashboardId and panelId have been removed.