Manage alert quality

While smart alerts focus on closing coverage gaps, the Alerts Overview gives you a health check for your entire alerting ecosystem — including conditions created manually, through the API or Terraform, or by smart alerts.

Reduce noise

Alert fatigue slows incident response. A condition counts as noisy when it generates three or more issues per hour for at least three hours within a 24-hour span. This definition is a starting point, not a recommendation — what counts as noisy depends on your priorities, so review these conditions and set thresholds that fit your needs.

To reduce noise:

1. On the Alerts Overview page, in the Noise overview section, click Manage under the noisy conditions.
2. For a condition that isn't useful, disable it with its toggle. To keep a condition but make it less noisy, click Edit.
3. Adjust the threshold based on the condition type:
   • For a static smart alert condition, enter a threshold value and tune it until the estimated alert events per week for that value match how many alerts you want. Or turn on Minimize noise to set the value automatically.
   • For an anomaly smart alert condition, drag the slider from more noisy to less noisy.
   • For other traditional alert condition types, set the threshold values that you find appropriate. It doesn't have automatic estimates or suggestions. Refer to Set thresholds for alert conditions.
4. Use the Compare threshold to past signals chart to check the threshold against past signals.
5. When you're satisfied with the threshold, save the condition.

Besides adjusting the threshold, you can reduce noise by editing other condition settings, such as the query, aggregation method, or window duration.

Manage conditions without signals

A condition might produce no signal because the service it monitors was renamed, re-architected, or removed. Some conditions, such as error rate or failure rate, produce no signal by design, so review each one before you act.

To clean up conditions without signals:

1. On the Alerts Overview page, in the Noise overview section, click Manage under the conditions producing no signal.
2. Drill into a condition that hasn't received signal data in the past 30 days to find why.
3. Disable or delete the condition if you no longer need it. To make it productive again, click Edit to open its setup page.
4. Adjust the query, threshold, or other settings as you would when creating a condition. For help, refer to Edit an alert condition.

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