Managing Dashboard Alerts
Learn about the alerts on your dashboard and how to respond to them.
What are Alerts?
Alerts are notifications about issues, warnings, or important events in your infrastructure. They help you:
- Detect problems - Before they impact users
- Respond quickly - To critical issues
- Monitor health - Of your entire system
- Track changes - Important events and updates
Alert Types
Critical Alerts 🔴
Immediate action required
- Service down or unavailable
- Data loss risk
- Security issue
- Resource exhaustion
Response time: Immediately (within minutes)
Warning Alerts 🟡
Attention needed soon
- High resource usage
- Performance degradation
- Configuration issues
- Approaching limits
Response time: Within hours
Info Alerts ⚪
Informational only
- Successful deployment
- Maintenance completed
- Configuration changes
- Routine information
Response time: For reference
Alert Severity Levels
| Severity | Icon | Color | Meaning | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Critical | 🔴 | Red | Urgent issue | Immediate |
| Warning | 🟡 | Orange | Needs attention | Soon |
| Info | ⚪ | Blue | FYI | Reference |
Reading Alert Messages
Each alert shows:
- Alert title - What the issue is
- Severity - How urgent it is
- Timestamp - When it occurred
- Details - More information about the issue
Example Alert Messages
Critical Alert: "Application down: Payment Service unavailable for 5 minutes"
- Severity: Critical
- Action: Investigate immediately
- Next step: Check app status, restart if needed
Warning Alert: "High CPU usage: API server 85% utilization"
- Severity: Warning
- Action: Monitor or scale up
- Next step: Check performance, increase resources
Info Alert: "Deployment successful: New version of website deployed"
- Severity: Info
- Action: None required
- Next step: Monitor for issues
Viewing Alerts
On Dashboard
- Find the Active Alerts section
- See up to 5 recent alerts
- Click alert for more details
Full Alert List
- Click View All in alerts section
- Or navigate to Monitoring → Alerts
- See complete alert history
- Filter and search alerts
Responding to Alerts
Critical Alert Response
- Read the alert - Understand the issue
- Assess impact - How does this affect users?
- Take action:
- Restart service
- Scale up resources
- Rollback deployment
- Contact support
- Verify fix - Confirm issue is resolved
- Document - Note what happened and how you fixed it
Warning Alert Response
- Investigate - Understand the cause
- Monitor - Watch the situation
- Take action if needed:
- Optimize performance
- Increase resources
- Fix configuration
- Prevent recurrence - Plan long-term solution
Info Alert Response
- Review - Note the information
- Archive - Mark as read if needed
- No action usually required
Common Alert Scenarios
Scenario: High CPU Usage Alert
Alert: "CPU usage: 95% on app server"
Actions:
- Check what's using CPU
- Optimize code if possible
- Increase instance size
- Add more instances
- Monitor improvement
Scenario: Deployment Failed Alert
Alert: "Deployment failed: Image pull error"
Actions:
- Check Docker image registry
- Verify credentials
- Check image availability
- Retry deployment
- Investigate root cause
Scenario: Database Connection Alert
Alert: "Database connections: 450/500 limit"
Actions:
- Check database query efficiency
- Add connection pooling
- Increase connection limit
- Optimize queries
- Monitor usage
Scenario: Service Down Alert
Alert: "Application unavailable: API Service"
Actions:
- Check service status immediately
- Review recent changes
- Check logs for errors
- Restart service if safe
- Rollback if necessary
- Contact support if needed
Alert Management
Marking Alerts as Read
- In the alerts section, click Mark all as read
- Or click individual alert to mark
- Read alerts stay visible but marked
Viewing Alert History
- Go to Monitoring → Alerts
- See all alerts (new and old)
- Filter by severity
- Filter by date range
- Search by keyword
Setting Alert Rules
Create custom alerts for:
- Specific resources
- Threshold values
- Application errors
- Performance metrics
See Alert Configuration for details.
Best Practices for Alert Management
✓ Act quickly on critical alerts - Don't delay
✓ Read the full message - Understand context
✓ Document responses - Keep records
✓ Set up notifications - Get alerted via email or Slack
✓ Review alert history - Identify patterns
✓ Adjust thresholds - Reduce false alarms
✓ Team communication - Notify team of issues
✓ Escalate if needed - Contact support for help
Preventing Alerts
Proactive Monitoring
- Regular checks - Review metrics daily
- Capacity planning - Don't run near limits
- Code optimization - Reduce resource usage
- Health checks - Ensure services are responding
- Load testing - Test before high-traffic events
Configuration
- Set reasonable thresholds - Not too sensitive
- Right-size resources - Match actual needs
- Plan growth - Scale before hitting limits
- Automate scaling - Use auto-scaling rules
- Redundancy - Have backups for critical services
Alert Notifications
Email Notifications
- Receive critical alerts via email
- Immediate for urgent issues
- Digest emails for less urgent
Slack Notifications
- Real-time alerts in Slack
- Integrate with your workflow
- Team visibility
Configure Notifications
- Go to Settings → Notifications
- Choose notification method
- Select alert types to receive
- Set notification schedule
Troubleshooting
Not Receiving Alerts?
- Check notification settings
- Verify email address
- Check Slack workspace connection
- Look in spam/junk folder
- Contact support if still not working
Getting too many alerts?
- Adjust threshold values
- Remove false alarm rules
- Group related alerts
- Filter less important severities
- Set quiet hours if available
Alert seems wrong?
- Verify the data it's based on
- Check system status independently
- Investigate recent changes
- Consider updating threshold
- Report to support if it's a bug