With a centralized view of all your alerts, automated alert escalation and grouping, and on-call scheduling, Grafana OnCall helps ensure that alert notifications reach the right people, at the right time using the right notification method.
These procedures introduce you to initial Grafana OnCall configuration steps, including monitoring system integration, how to set up escalation chains, and how to use your calendar service for on-call scheduling.
Grafana OnCall is available for Grafana Cloud as well as Grafana open source users. You must have aGrafana Cloudaccount or [Open Source Grafana OnCall]({{< relref "open-source.md" >}})
>**Note:** If you are using Grafana OnCall with your Grafana Cloud instance there are no install steps. Access Grafana OnCall from your Grafana Cloud account and skip ahead to “Get alerts into Grafana OnCall”
Once you’ve installed Grafana OnCall or accessed it from your Grafana Cloud instance, you can begin integrating with monitoring systems, configuring escalation chains, and get alerts into Grafana OnCall.
Regardless of where your alerts originate, you can send them to Grafana OnCall via available integrations or customizable webhooks. To start receiving alerts in Grafana OnCall, use the following steps to configure your first integration and send a demo alert.
For more information on Grafana OnCall integrations and further configuration guidance, refer to, [Connect to Grafana OnCall]({{< relref "integrations/" >}})
Escalation Chains are customizable automated alert routing steps that enable you to specify who is notified for a certain alert. In addition to escalation chains, you can configure Routes to send alerts to different escalation chains depending on the alert details.
Once your integration is configured, you can set up an escalation chain to determine how alerts from your integration are handled. Multi-step escalation chains help ensure thorough alert escalation to prevent alerts from being missed.
1. Navigate to the **Escalation Chains** tab and click **+ New Escalation Chain**
2. Give your Escalation Chain a useful name and click **Create**
3. Add a series of escalation steps from the available dropdown options.
4. To link your Escalation Chain to your integration, navigate back to the **Integrations tab**, Select your newly created Escalation Chain from the “**Escalate to**” dropdown.
For more information on Escalation Chains and more ways to customize them, refer to [Configure and manage Escalation Chains]({{< relref "escalation-policies/configure-escalation-chains/" >}})
In order for Grafana OnCall to notify you of an alert, you must configure how you want to be notified. Personal notification policies, chatops integrations, and on-call schedules allow you to automate how users are notified of alerts.
Personal notification policies determine how a user is notified for a certain type of alert. Administrators can configure how users receive notification for certain types of alerts. For more information on personal notification policies, refer to [Manage users and teams for Grafana OnCall]({{< relref "configure-user-settings/" >}})
Grafana OnCall integrates closely with your Slack workspace to deliver alert notifications to individuals, user groups, and channels. Slack notifications can be triggered by steps in an escalation chain or as a step in users personal notification policies.
For further instruction on connecting to your Slack workspace, refer to [Connect Slack to Grafana OnCall]({{< relref "chat-options/configure-slack/" >}})
