Journey overview on Grafana Labs

Journey overview

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 18:48:05 -0400

Journey overview

Who this journey is for

Grafana Cloud users who are new to alerting.
Teams who want to detect problems automatically.
Users familiar with the Grafana Cloud interface who haven’t configured alert rules before or people who want to see how Grafana Alerting works in practice.

What you’ll learn and do

You’ll build an alert rule that watches QuickPizza for HTTP 5xx server errors in the visual query builder. The journey walks through each section of the alert rule editor, one piece at a time.

Section	What you’ll do
Name and query	Name the rule, build a Prometheus query in Builder mode, and set a threshold
Folder and labels	Organize the rule and add labels
Evaluation behavior	Configure how often the rule runs and how it handles gaps
Notifications and save	Choose where notifications go, preview, and save the rule
Create an alert with code	Write the same kind of rule in Code mode, then add a silence

Estimated time

45-55 minutes

How alerting works

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 13:40:40 -0500

How alerting works

The following diagram shows the five-step alerting flow.

Grafana Alerting monitors your data and notifies you when something needs attention. Here is the five-step flow:

Step	What happens
1	You create a rule that defines what data to watch and when to alert
2	Grafana checks the rule at regular intervals
3	If the problem persists long enough, the alert fires
4	A notification is sent to a destination you configure (email, Slack, etc.)
5	When the problem clears, a “resolved” notification follows

What you’ll build in this journey

By the end of this journey, you’ll have a working alert rule and a deeper understanding of how the alerting process functions in Grafana.

Is this journey right for you

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 13:40:40 -0500

Is this journey right for you

This journey is a good fit if you:

Have a Grafana Cloud account. The journey uses the QuickPizza demo app (installed in the hands-on path), so no external data is required.
Want to learn how to set up automated alerts from scratch.
Are comfortable navigating the Grafana Cloud interface (menus, dashboards).
Prefer building queries visually (no PromQL or code required).

This journey might not be right if you

Already create and manage alert rules regularly (future journeys will cover advanced alert rules and templates).
Are an on-call responder looking to triage and resolve alerts (a future journey will cover alert response).

Prerequisites

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 13:40:40 -0500

Prerequisites

To complete the hands-on steps in this journey, you need:

Requirement	Details
Grafana Cloud account	Sign up to access
Permission to manage alerts	Required to create alert rules and install the demo data
Basic Grafana navigation	Familiarity with menus and dashboards

What you don’t need

No external data source. The hands-on path installs the QuickPizza demo app for you.
No Go template syntax. Notification templates are covered in a later journey.
No PromQL. Every query in this journey uses Builder mode.