> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.elementary-data.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Alert rules

**Alert Rules** help you control where alerts are sent and when they are triggered, so you can stay focused on the incidents that matter most. In Elementary Cloud, each rule combines **filters** (what to alert on) and **destinations** (where to send the alert).

### Destinations: Where Alerts Are Sent

A destination defines where an alert notification will be delivered. You can route alerts to messaging apps (like [Slack](/cloud/integrations/alerts/slack) or [Microsoft Teams](/cloud/integrations/alerts/ms-teams)) or incident management tools (like [PagerDuty](/cloud/integrations/alerts/pagerduty) or [Opsgenie](/cloud/integrations/alerts/opsgenie)). For all [supported tools](/cloud/features/alerts-and-incidents/alerts-and-incidents-overview#supported-alert-integrations), you can also specify the exact channel, team, or escalation path for the alert. Each alert can be routed to one or multiple destinations — within the same tool or across different tools.

### Filters: What Triggers an Alert

Filters define which alerts are routed through a rule. They help you fine-tune alerting, reduce noise, and focus on critical issues.
You can filter by:

* **Assets** — Filter alerts based on model name, owner, tag, or status.
* **Test Types** — Filter by the type of test that triggered the alert, such as volume anomalies, freshness anomalies, model errors, or dbt tests.
* **Downstream Impacted Assets** — Filter alerts based on the downstream impact of an incident.
  Trigger alerts only when specific downstream assets are affected. You can filter impacted assets by:
  * **Criticality** — Only alert if critical assets are impacted.
  * **Tags** — Filter assets by tag.
  * **Owners** — Filter assets by owner.
  * **Asset Type** — Model, source, seed, snapshot, or exposure.

This helps ensure that alerts are only triggered when truly important assets are impacted, reducing alert fatigue and keeping your team focused.

<Note>Downstream impact is currently determined based on table-level lineage.</Note>

### Rule order matters

The order of your rules is important. Here’s how it works:

* When an alert is generated, it's evaluated in order, from top to bottom.
* As soon as a rule matches, the alert is routed to that rule’s destination.
* No further rules are checked after the first match.

If you want alerts to be routed based on all applicable rules (not just the first match), we’re testing a Beta feature that enables this. Reach out if you’d like early access!

<video autoPlay muted loop playsInline className="w-full aspect-video" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/diuctyblm/video/upload/v1720004495/alert-rules_vlbxre.mp4" />

### Alert rules default configuration

* The channel you choose when connecting your messaging app ([Slack](/cloud/integrations/alerts/slack), [Microsoft Teams](/cloud/integrations/alerts/ms-teams), etc.)
  is automatically added as a default alert rule, that sends all the failures to that channel without any filtering.
* By default, warnings do not send alerts.

To modify, deactivate or add more rules, simply navigate to the `Alert Rules` page in the menu.