Set evaluation behavior and labels

The evaluation behavior determines how often Grafana checks your alert condition and how long the condition must persist before firing. Labels help organize your alerts and drive notification routing.

To configure evaluation behavior and labels, complete the following steps:

1. In the Set evaluation behavior section, select or create a folder for your alert rule.

   Folders help organize alert rules by team, service, or purpose.

   For example, select or create a folder named Infrastructure alerts or Application logs.

2. Select or create an Evaluation group.

   Evaluation groups batch rules that share the same evaluation interval.

   Expand table

   If alerting on	Example group name
   Metrics	CPU and memory alerts
   Logs	Error rate alerts

3. Set the Evaluation interval—how often Grafana runs your query and checks the condition.

   For example, enter 1m for critical alerts or 5m for less urgent monitoring.

4. Set the Pending period (also called “for” duration)—how long the condition must be true before the alert fires.

   Expand table

   Alert type	Pending period	Why
   Metrics (CPU spike)	5m	Filter brief spikes during deployments
   Logs (error burst)	2m	Catch sustained error patterns, not single errors

   Tip: A 5-minute pending period with a 1-minute evaluation means the condition must be true for 5 consecutive checks before firing.

5. In the Add labels section, add labels that identify and categorize your alert:

   • Click + Add label.

   • Enter a label key and value.

     For example:

     • severity: warning or critical
     • team: platform or database
     • type: metrics or logs
     • service: api-gateway or payment-service

6. In the Add annotations section, optionally add context for responders:

   • Summary: Brief description of what’s wrong.

     Expand table

     If alerting on	Example summary
     Metrics	CPU usage is high on {{ $labels.instance }}
     Logs	Error rate elevated for {{ $labels.job }}

   • Description: Detailed context or troubleshooting steps.

   • Runbook URL: Link to documentation for responding to this alert.

In the next milestone, you’ll configure where notifications are sent when this alert fires.