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Section 5 · Notifications and save

How summary and description annotations give responders context before they open Grafana.

Estimated time: 1 min

Notification message

When an alert fires, the notification includes:

  • Alert name: identifies which rule fired
  • Status: either Firing or Resolved
  • Labels: the tags attached to the alert

Add context with annotations

You add summary and description as optional annotations on the alert rule in the rule editor. You do not set them on the contact point or notification template. When the rule fires, Grafana injects that text into the notification your contact point sends to Slack, email, or another integration.

AnnotationPurposeExample
SummaryOne sentence explaining what happenedRequest duration exceeded the threshold on the affected service
DescriptionAdditional detail about what to check or do nextCheck the affected service for slow responses
Centered example notification with dashed boxes for status, alert name, labels, summary, and description, plus side callouts

Why this matters

The person receiving the notification needs to understand the problem immediately. A clear summary reduces the time between “alert received” and “investigation started.”