Alerts

Receiving alerts by email

This guide will walk you through the steps to configure Grafana to send email notifications when an alert is triggered on your dashboard. This process involves modifying configuration files and setting up an SMTP server to handle the outgoing emails.

Copy the grafana.ini file from Docker container

First, you need to extract the grafana.ini file from your Grafana Docker container to your local system. For example:

docker cp grafana:/etc/grafana/grafana.ini /your-local-directory

This command copies the grafana.ini from the Docker container to your local machine for editing.

Modify the grafana.ini file

Open the grafana.ini file you just copied in a text editor and locate the [smtp] section. You will need to enable SMTP and configure it to use your email provider’s SMTP server. Here’s how you can configure it for an email account:

smtp configuration

Note

The password used in the grafana.ini SMTP configuration is not your regular email account password. Detailed descriptions are provided at the bottom of this page.

Mount grafana.ini to the Grafana container

You now need to ensure that your modified grafana.ini is used by Grafana inside the Docker container. To do this, update the docker-compose-monitoring.yml file to mount the local grafana.ini file into the container:

mount grafana

This line tells Docker to use the local version of grafana.ini when starting the Grafana container.

Restart wis2box to applying changes

For the changes to take effect, restart your wis2box environment:

python3 wis2box-ctl.py restart

This command stops and then restarts your containers, ensuring that the new configuration is loaded.

Setting up the notification channel in Grafana

Log in to Grafana with your admin credentials:

  • Navigate to Alerting -> Notification channels.

  • Click “Add channel” and choose email as the notification type.

add channel

Enter your email address in the appropriate field and save the notification channel.

notification channel detail

Configuring alerts in your Grafana dashboard

Now, set up alerts within your Grafana dashboard:

  • Open the dashboard where you want to add an alert.

  • Go to the panel where you want to add the alert and click on the “Alert” tab.

  • Set your alert conditions, then under “Notifications”, select the email notification channel you configured earlier.

  • Click “Apply” and save the dashboard.

  • Export and save the updated dashboard JSON to ensure the changes are persistent.

add alert notification

Testing the setup

After setting everything up, trigger an alert in your Grafana dashboard to test if the email notifications are working. You should receive an email when the alert conditions are met.

receive alert email

Note

The most challenging part of this setup is obtaining the correct SMTP password. Here’s how to do it for different email providers:

For gmail:

  • Enable Less Secure Apps: If you don’t use 2FA, enable “Less secure app access” in your Google account settings.

  • Generate an App Password: If you use 2FA:

  • Go to your Google Account -> Security -> App passwords.

  • Generate a new app password for “Mail”.

  • Use this app password in the grafana.ini password field.

For WMO email or other providers:

  • Check Provider Documentation: Different providers have different methods for generating app passwords or enabling SMTP.

  • Contact IT Support: If you’re using a corporate email (like WMO email), contact your IT department to get the correct SMTP settings and password.