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Create or edit an activity log, service health, or resource health alert rule

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This article shows you how to create or edit an activity log, service health, or resource health alert rule in Azure Monitor. To learn more about alerts, see the alerts overview.

You create an alert rule by combining the resources to be monitored, the monitoring data from the resource, and the conditions that you want to trigger the alert. You can then define action groups and alert processing rules to determine what happens when an alert is triggered.

Alerts triggered by these alert rules contain a payload that uses the common alert schema.

Prerequisites

To create or edit an alert rule, you must have the following permissions:

  • Read permission on the target resource of the alert rule.
  • Write permission on the resource group in which the alert rule is created. If you're creating the alert rule from the Azure portal, the alert rule is created by default in the same resource group in which the target resource resides.
  • Read permission on any action group associated to the alert rule, if applicable.

Access the alert rule wizard in the Azure portal

There are multiple ways to create or edit an alert rule.

Create or edit an alert rule from the portal home page

  1. In the Azure portal, select Monitor.
  2. On the left pane, select Alerts.
  3. Select + Create > Alert rule.

Screenshot that shows steps to create an alert rule from the portal home page.

Create or edit an alert rule from a specific resource

  1. In the Azure portal, go to the resource.
  2. On the left pane, select Alerts.
  3. Select + Create > Alert rule.

Screenshot that shows steps to create an alert rule from a selected resource.

Edit an existing alert rule

  1. In the Azure portal, either from the home page or from a specific resource, select Alerts on the left pane.

  2. Select Alert rules.

  3. Select the alert rule you want to edit, and then select Edit.

    Screenshot that shows the button for editing an existing activity log alert rule.

  4. Select any of the tabs for the alert rule to edit the settings.

Configure the scope of the alert rule

  1. On the Select a resource pane, set the scope for your alert rule. You can filter by subscription, resource type, or resource location.

    Screenshot that shows the pane for selecting a resource during the creation of a new alert rule.

  2. Select Apply.

Configure alert rule conditions

  1. On the Condition tab, select Activity log, Resource health, or Service health. Or select See all signals if you want to choose a different signal for the condition.

    Screenshot that shows popular signals for creating an alert rule.

  2. (Optional) If you selected See all signals in the previous step, use the Select a signal pane to search for the signal name or filter the list of signals. Filter by:

    • Signal type: The type of alert rule that you're creating.
    • Signal source: The service that sends the signal.

    This table describes the available services for activity log alert rules:

    Signal source Description
    Activity log – Policy The service that provides the policy-related activity log events.
    Activity log – Autoscale The service that provides the autoscale-related activity log events.
    Activity log – Security The service that provides the security-related activity log events.
    Resource health The service that provides the resource-level health status.
    Service health The service that provides the subscription-level health status.

    Select the signal name, and then select Apply.

    1. On the Conditions pane, select the Chart period value.

      The Preview chart shows the results of your selection.

    2. In the Alert logic section, select values for each of these fields:

      Field Description
      Event level Select the level of the events for this alert rule. Values are Critical, Error, Warning, Informational, Verbose, and All.
      Status Select the status levels for the alert.
      Event initiated by Select the user principal or service principal that initiated the event.

Configure alert rule actions

On the Actions tab, select or create the required action groups.

Screenshot that shows the Actions tab for creating a new alert rule.

Configure alert rule details

  1. On the Details tab, enter values for Alert rule name and Alert rule description.

  2. Select Enable alert rule upon creation for the alert rule to start running as soon as you finish creating it.

  3. (Optional) For Region, select a region in which your alert rule will be processed. If you need to make sure the rule is processed within the EU Data Boundary, select the North Europe or West Europe region. In all other cases, you can select the Global region (which is the default).

    Note

    Service Health alert rules can only be located in the Global region.

    Screenshot that shows the Details tab for creating a new activity log alert rule.

  4. (Optional) In the Custom properties section, if this alert rule contains action groups, you can add your own properties to include in the alert notification payload. You can use these properties in the actions that the action group calls, such as by a webhook, Azure function, or logic app action.

    The custom properties are specified as key/value pairs by using static text, a dynamic value extracted from the alert payload, or a combination of both.

    The format for extracting a dynamic value from the alert payload is: ${<path to schema field>}. For example: ${data.essentials.monitorCondition}.

    Use the format of the common alert schema to specify the field in the payload, whether or not the action groups configured for the alert rule use the common schema.

    Note

    • Custom properties are added to the payload of the alert, but they don't appear in the email template or in the alert details in the Azure portal.

    Screenshot that shows custom properties for creating a new alert rule.

    The following examples use values in Custom properties to utilize data from a payload that uses the common alert schema.

    This example creates an Additional Details tag with data regarding the window start time and window end time:

    • Name: Additional Details
    • Value: Evaluation windowStartTime: ${data.alertContext.condition.windowStartTime}. windowEndTime: ${data.alertContext.condition.windowEndTime}
    • Result: AdditionalDetails:Evaluation windowStartTime: 2023-04-04T14:39:24.492Z. windowEndTime: 2023-04-04T14:44:24.492Z

    This example adds data regarding the reason for resolving or firing the alert:

    • Name: Alert ${data.essentials.monitorCondition} reason
    • Value: ${data.alertContext.condition.allOf[0].metricName} ${data.alertContext.condition.allOf[0].operator} ${data.alertContext.condition.allOf[0].threshold} ${data.essentials.monitorCondition}. The value is ${data.alertContext.condition.allOf[0].metricValue}
    • Potential results:
      • Alert Resolved reason: Percentage CPU GreaterThan5 Resolved. The value is 3.585
      • Alert Fired reason": "Percentage CPU GreaterThan5 Fired. The value is 10.585

Configure alert rule tags

On the Tags tab, set any required tags on the alert rule resource.

Screenshot that shows the Tags tab for creating a new alert rule.

Review and create the alert rule

  1. On the Review + create tab, the rule is validated. If there's a problem, go back and fix it.

  2. When validation passes and you've reviewed the settings, select the Create button.

    Screenshot that shows the tab for reviewing and creating a new alert rule.

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