Smart Alerting Strategy
Effective alerting balances timely notification with avoiding alert fatigue. Set up different alert levels based on error severity and impact.
Alert Severity Levels
Define clear severity levels for different types of errors:
Severity Classification
- Critical: Application down, data loss, security breach
- High: Major feature broken, significant user impact
- Medium: Minor feature issues, limited user impact
- Low: Cosmetic issues, edge cases
Alert Conditions
Set up intelligent conditions to trigger alerts:
Common Alert Rules
- Error rate exceeds threshold (e.g., >5% of requests)
- New error type appears
- Error frequency spikes significantly
- Critical errors occur
- Error affects specific user segments
Escalation Procedures
Define clear escalation procedures for different alert types and timeframes.
Notification Channels
Use appropriate notification channels for different alert types:
Channel Selection
- Email: Non-urgent issues, daily summaries
- SMS: Critical issues requiring immediate attention
- Slack/Teams: Team communication and collaboration
- PagerDuty: On-call rotation and escalation
- Dashboard: Real-time monitoring and status