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Don’t wait for users to report problems. Alert Rules proactively monitor your AI operations and notify you the moment something goes wrong—whether it’s runaway costs, degraded performance, or elevated error rates. Catch issues before they impact users.

Quick Start: Alerts

New to alerts? Set up your first alert rule in minutes.

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Why Alert Rules Matter

AI systems can fail silently. Costs creep up, latency degrades, and errors accumulate without obvious symptoms:
RiskHow Alerts Help
Cost OverrunsGet notified when token spend exceeds thresholds per request or time period
Performance DegradationAlert when latency spikes above acceptable levels
Error Rate SpikesDetect when failures exceed normal baselines
SLA ViolationsMonitor metrics that matter for your service commitments

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Alert Rules Dashboard

Navigate to Alert Rules from the left navigation panel. Alert Rules
ColumnDescription
Alert NameIdentifier for the alert rule
StatusActive or disabled
Last TriggeredWhen the alert most recently fired
ActionsEnable, disable, edit, or delete the rule

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Creating Alert Rules

1

Open Creation Form

Click Create Alert Rule in the top right corner.
2

Basic Information

FieldDescription
Alert NameA descriptive name (e.g., “High Cost Alert - Production”)
DescriptionOptional details about what the alert monitors
3

Configure Contact Points

Select where notifications should be sent when the alert triggers.
Contact points must be configured first in Settings → Contact Points. See Configuring Contact Points below.
4

Define Scope

Choose what level to monitor:
ScopeUse Case
TraceMonitor entire requests end-to-end
SpanMonitor individual operations (LLM calls, tool executions)
5

Select Metric

Choose what to measure:
  • Cost: Token/API spend in USD
  • Latency: Response time in milliseconds
  • Error Rate: Percentage of failed requests
  • Token Count: Input/output token usage
6

Apply Filters (Optional)

Narrow down which traces trigger the alert by filtering on:
  • Model: Specific AI model (e.g., gpt-4, claude-3)
  • Tenant ID: Monitor specific customers or organizations
  • Environment: Production, staging, development
  • Service: Particular microservice or component
Filters help reduce noise by limiting alerts to specific contexts. For example, monitor production costs separately from development.
7

Set Trigger Conditions

Define when the alert should fire:
  • Threshold: The value that triggers the alert
  • Operator: Greater than, less than, equals
  • Time Window: Evaluation period (optional)
8

Save

Click Create to activate the alert rule.

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How Alerts Work

When trigger conditions are met, Netra:
  1. Evaluates incoming traces against your alert rules
  2. Triggers the alert when conditions match
  3. Sends notifications to all configured contact points
  4. Updates the alert’s status and last triggered timestamp
Alerts evaluate in real-time as traces arrive. There’s no polling delay—you’re notified immediately when thresholds are breached.

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Configuring Contact Points

Before creating alerts, set up your notification channels.
1

Navigate to Settings

Go to Settings → Contact Points.
2

Create Contact Point

Click Create Contact Point and provide:
  • Name: A descriptive label (e.g., “Engineering Slack”, “On-Call Email”)
  • Integration: Choose Email or Slack
3

Configure Integration

Enter the email address(es) to receive notifications.
  • Supports multiple recipients (comma-separated)
  • Notifications include alert details, triggered values, and links to relevant traces
Choose your integration method:Option 1: Slack API
  • Provide the recipient channel or user
  • Enter your Slack Bot token
Option 2: Webhook URL
4

Save

Click Create to save the contact point. It’s now available when creating alert rules.

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Use Cases

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Cost Monitoring

Prevent budget overruns:
  1. Create an alert for Cost > $0.50 per trace
  2. Set scope to Trace to monitor full request cost
  3. Route to your finance or engineering Slack channel

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Latency SLAs

Ensure performance commitments:
  1. Create an alert for Latency > 3000ms
  2. Set scope to Trace for end-to-end latency
  3. Notify your on-call team via email

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Error Detection

Catch failures early:
  1. Create an alert for Error Rate > 5%
  2. Set a time window to avoid false positives from single failures
  3. Route to your incident management system

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Per-Tenant Monitoring

For multi-tenant applications:
  1. Create alerts scoped to specific tenant IDs
  2. Monitor per-tenant cost or error rates
  3. Proactively reach out before customers report issues

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Managing Alerts

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Enable/Disable Alerts

Toggle alerts on or off without deleting them:
  • Useful for maintenance windows
  • Temporarily silence noisy alerts while investigating

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Edit Alert Rules

Modify existing alerts to:
  • Adjust thresholds as your system scales
  • Add or remove contact points
  • Change scope or metrics

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Delete Alerts

Remove alerts that are no longer needed. This action is permanent.

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Best Practices

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Setting Thresholds

  • Start conservative: Begin with higher thresholds and tighten over time
  • Use baseline data: Review your Dashboard metrics to understand normal ranges
  • Account for variance: Set thresholds above typical peaks to avoid alert fatigue

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Organizing Contact Points

  • Separate by severity: Route critical alerts to on-call, informational alerts to Slack
  • Use descriptive names: “Production Critical” vs “Dev Notifications”
  • Test before relying: Send a test notification to verify delivery

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Avoiding Alert Fatigue

  • Be specific: Narrow scope to reduce false positives
  • Set appropriate windows: Use time-based aggregation for rate metrics
  • Review regularly: Disable or tune alerts that fire too often without action
Last modified on March 17, 2026