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Alerts are a critical entity in your incident managment workflow. They represent a notable event that might indicate a service outage or disruption. GitLab provides a list view for triage and detail view for deeper investigation of what happened.
The **Alert details** tab has two sections. The top section provides a short list of critical details such as the severity, start time, number of events, and originating monitorting tool. The second section displays the full alert payload.
> [Introduced](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/217768) in GitLab 13.2.
The **Metrics** tab will display a metrics chart for alerts coming from Prometheus. If the alert originated from any other tool, the **Metrics** tab will be empty. To set up alerts for GitLab-managed Prometheus instances, see [Managed Prometheus instances](../metrics/alerts.md#managed-prometheus-instances). For externally-managed Prometheus instances, you will need to configure your alerting
rules to display a chart in the alert. For information about how to configure
your alerting rules, see [Embedding metrics based on alerts in incident issues](../metrics/embed.md#embedding-metrics-based-on-alerts-in-incident-issues). See
> - [Introduced](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/201846) in GitLab Ultimate 12.8. and [improved](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/217768) in GitLab 13.3.
> - [Moved](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/25455) to [GitLab Core](https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/) 12.9.
Viewing logs from a metrics panel can be useful if you're triaging an
application incident and need to [explore logs](../metrics/dashboards/index.md#chart-context-menu)
from across your application. These logs help you understand what's affecting
your application's performance and how to resolve any problems.
1. Sign in as a user with Developer or higher [permissions](../../user/permissions.md).
1. Navigate to **Operations > Alerts**.
1. Select the alert you want to view.
1. Below the title of the alert, select the **Metrics** tab.
1. Select the [menu](../metrics/dashboards/index.md#chart-context-menu) of
the metric chart to view options.
1. Select **View logs**.
### Activity feed tab
> [Introduced](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/3066) in GitLab 13.1.
The **Activity feed** tab is a log of activity on the alert. When you take action on an alert, this is logged as a system note. This gives you a linear
timeline of the alert's investigation and assignment history.
The following actions will result in a system note:
- [Updating the status of an alert](#update-an-alerts-status)
- [Creating an incident based on an alert](#create-an-incident-from-an-alert)
- [Assignment of an alert to a user](#assign-an-alert)
difficult to track who is investigating and working on it. Assigning alerts eases collaboration and delegation by indicating which user is owning the alert. GitLab supports only a single assignee per alert.
> - [Introduced](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/232492) in GitLab 13.5.
> - It's [deployed behind a feature flag](../../user/feature_flags.md), disabled by default.
> - It's disabled on GitLab.com.
> - It's not recommended for production use.
> - To use it in GitLab self-managed instances, ask a GitLab administrator to [enable it](#enable-or-disable-environment-link-in-alert-details). **(CORE ONLY)**
CAUTION: **Warning:**
This feature might not be available to you. Check the **version history** note above for details.