Configure personal notification rules

In this milestone, you set up user-specific notification rules. Notification rules control how you are notified of an alert: the method used and timing between notification steps if you have not responded.

There are two notification rule sets: Default and Important. Escalation chains specify which set is used for a notification event. Use Default for less urgent alerts that should not wake someone up. Use Important for critical issues that warrant loud and persistent delivery. All users should configure both sets using a consistent team approach.

Your personal IRM settings can be managed anytime from your Grafana user profile. This is where you can connect notification methods, link external accounts, and configure notification rules.

Complete the following steps to add an additional notification channel, and defining both Default and Important rule sequences:

To access your notification settings:

1. In your Grafana Cloud stack, click your user icon (top right).
2. Click Profile.
3. Click the IRM tab.

The email address associated with your Grafana Cloud user is automatically available as a notification method. You need to connect additional notification channels before you can reference them in your notification rules.

To use phone call or SMS, verify your phone number:

1. In your IRM profile, click the Phone verification tab.
2. Enter your phone number with the leading + followed by your country code.
3. Click Send verification code and enter the code to complete verification.

After you have at least two notification channels to receive notifications from IRM, define your notification rules:

To configure your Default notification rules:

1. Open the Notification rules tab of your IRM profile.
2. In the Default section, click + Add notification step and select Email.
3. Click + Add step and select Wait. Set the wait to 5 minutes.
4. Click + Add step and select SMS.

To configure your Important notification rules:

1. In the Important section, click + Add notification step and select SMS.
2. Click + Add step → Wait → set to 5 minutes.
3. Click + Add step → Phone call.

Important rules should use faster escalation and higher impact channels to ensure critical alerts get attention.

Your notification rules are now configured. When alert groups or incidents are routed to you (via schedules or direct escalation), IRM begins notifying you using the set of rules specified in the escalation configuration.

In the next milestone, you connect an alert rule to send alerts to IRM using your IRM contact point.