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Maintenance mode notice for Grafana OnCall (OSS)

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 12:35:46 -0500

Maintenance mode notice for Grafana OnCall (OSS)

As of March 11, 2025, Grafana OnCall OSS has entered maintenance mode as we focus our development efforts on the unified Grafana Cloud IRM experience. This page provides important information about this transition and your options moving forward.

Timeline and impact

March 11, 2025: Grafana OnCall OSS enters maintenance mode
- The grafana/oncall GitHub repository will transition to read-only mode
- No new features will be developed
- Critical bug fixes and security patches (CVEs with a CVSS score of 7.0 or higher) will still be addressed
March 24, 2026: Full archival of the OSS project
- End of Cloud Connection support
- Mobile app push notifications for OSS users will no longer be supported
- SMS and phone call notifications that rely on the Cloud Connection will no longer be supported

Options for OSS users

During the maintenance period, the OSS version will continue to function, but we encourage users to evaluate migration options.

Continue using Grafana OnCall OSS

If you choose to continue using the OSS version during the maintenance period:

The software will continue to function in your environment.
Your on-call schedules, integrations, and workflows remain operational.
You will need to seek alternative notification services for phone, SMS, and mobile push notifications.

Caution
Certain OnCall OSS notifications rely on Grafana Cloud services, and these Cloud-connected functionalities will no longer be available after March 24, 2026. For more detail, refer to the Cloud Connection update section.

Migrate to Grafana Cloud IRM

For OSS users who want to retain full mobile push notifications and built-in SMS/voice call support, Grafana Cloud IRM offers a fully managed alternative. The Grafana Cloud Free Tier includes 3 users.

Grafana Cloud IRM combines the best features of both Grafana OnCall and Grafana Incident into a unified incident response and management solution. Benefits include:

Seamless integration with Grafana Alerting and other Grafana Cloud services
Continued development of new features and improvements
Simplified user experience with a unified interface
No infrastructure to maintain

For migration instructions, see Migrate from Grafana OnCall OSS to Grafana Cloud IRM.

Cloud Connection update

Grafana OnCall (OSS) currently relies on Cloud Connection with Grafana Cloud to support SMS, phone, and push notifications. This connection will no longer be supported after March 24, 2026, so you will need to migrate to alternative notification solutions.

Affected features

Mobile app push notifications: OSS users will no longer receive push notifications through the Grafana IRM mobile app after this date.
SMS and phone call notifications: Any SMS or voice call notifications that rely on the Cloud Connection will stop functioning.

Alternative notification options for OSS users

Consider these alternatives:

Push notifications: Configure push notifications with a third-party notification service such as Pushover, Gotify, or ntfy. Refer to Configure push notifications for step-by-step instructions.
Phone calls and SMS: OnCall OSS already supports configuring your own Twilio account credentials for phone and SMS notifications. Follow the instructions in Configure phone and SMS notifications.

Resources

Official announcements

Documentation

Migrate from Grafana OnCall OSS to Grafana Cloud IRM

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 12:35:46 -0500

Migrate from Grafana OnCall OSS to Grafana Cloud IRM

This guide provides instructions for migrating your self-managed Grafana OnCall OSS instance to Grafana Cloud IRM. You’ll learn how to migrate OnCall-specific resources—including integrations, escalation chains, routes, and on-call schedules—using Terraform or the OnCall API.

For detailed migration and configuration guidance, refer to the Grafana IRM migration documentation.

Before you begin

Before starting migration, ensure you have the following:

A Grafana Cloud account with access to Grafana Cloud IRM
Admin access to your Grafana OnCall OSS instance
An API token from your OnCall OSS instance (created from the Settings tab)
An API token from your Grafana Cloud IRM instance

Migration approaches for OnCall resources

There are two approaches for migrating OnCall configurations to Grafana Cloud IRM:

Terraform: Infrastructure-as-code workflows and repeatable migrations
OnCall API: Custom migration scripts and selective resource migration

Migrate OnCall resources

Use Terraform

Terraform provides a structured and repeatable approach to migrating OnCall configurations. This method is ideal if you already manage infrastructure as code or want version-controlled migration.

Set up Terraform providers

Configure separate Terraform providers for your source (OSS) and destination (Cloud) instances:

# For OSS (Source)
provider "grafana" {
  alias               = "oncall_source"
  oncall_access_token = "<OSS_API_TOKEN>"
  oncall_url          = "https://<ONCALL_OSS_INSTANCE>/api"
}

# For Cloud (Destination)
provider "grafana" {
  alias               = "oncall_destination"
  oncall_access_token = "<CLOUD_API_TOKEN>"
}

Replace the following:

<OSS_API_TOKEN>: Your OnCall OSS API token
<ONCALL_OSS_INSTANCE>: The URL of your OnCall OSS instance
<CLOUD_API_TOKEN>: Your Grafana Cloud IRM API token

Note
For Grafana Cloud, you don’t need to specify an oncall_url parameter. The provider uses the Cloud API endpoint automatically.

Migrate integrations

Integrations handle alerts from monitoring systems. Export existing integrations from OnCall OSS and define them in Grafana Cloud:

resource "grafana_oncall_integration" "example_integration" {
  provider = grafana.oncall_destination
  name     = "Example Integration"
  type     = "webhook"
}

Migrate escalation chains and routes

Escalation chains define how alerts are processed and who gets notified.

Define escalation chains:

resource "grafana_oncall_escalation" "critical_escalation" {
  provider = grafana.oncall_destination
  name     = "Critical Alerts Escalation"
}

Connect integrations to escalation chains using routes:

resource "grafana_oncall_route" "database_critical_route" {
  provider             = grafana.oncall_destination
  integration_id       = grafana_oncall_integration.example_integration.id
  escalation_chain_id  = grafana_oncall_escalation.critical_escalation.id
  routing_regex        = "payload.severity == \"critical\""
}

Migrate on-call schedules

For iCal-based schedules, export the iCal URL from your OSS instance and import it in Grafana Cloud IRM.

For web-based schedules, recreate schedules using Terraform:

resource "grafana_oncall_schedule" "team_schedule" {
  provider = grafana.oncall_destination
  name     = "Team On-Call Rotation"
  type     = "web"
}

Use the OnCall API

If Terraform isn’t suitable for your workflow, you can migrate using the OnCall HTTP API directly.

Export resources from your OSS instance: Use the API to list and export integrations, escalation chains, schedules, and routes.
Import resources into Grafana Cloud IRM: Create resources in this order to maintain dependencies:
1. Integrations
2. Escalation chains
3. Routes
4. Schedules

For API reference documentation, refer to OnCall API reference.

Migrate teams and users

Grafana Teams manage user access and permissions. When migrating teams and users to Grafana Cloud, you have several options:

Manually recreate teams

Recreate teams in Grafana Cloud and assign appropriate permissions to maintain your security policies.

Use SCIM provisioning

If your organization uses an identity provider that supports SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management), you can automate user and team provisioning in Grafana Cloud. SCIM synchronizes users and groups from your identity provider to Grafana Cloud automatically.

For more information, refer to Configure SCIM provisioning.

Use Team Sync

If you use an identity provider for authentication, consider using Team Sync to automatically manage team membership based on your identity provider groups.

For more information, refer to Team sync.

Migrate other Grafana resources

If you’re also migrating dashboards, data sources, or other Grafana resources alongside OnCall, the Grafana Cloud Migration Assistant can help.

Note
The Migration Assistant doesn’t migrate OnCall or IRM resources. Use the methods described in Migrate OnCall resources for OnCall-specific configurations.

The Grafana Cloud Migration Assistant is available in Grafana 11.2+ as a public preview, with the feature enabled by default in Grafana 11.5 and later.

The Migration Assistant supports transferring:

Dashboards
Folders
Data sources
App and panel plugins
Library panels
Grafana Alerting resources

Migration best practices

Test in a staging environment before migrating production resources.
Plan for a cutover period during which you don’t create new alerts or schedules in the OSS instance.
Migrate resources in order: integrations first, then escalation chains, routes, and finally schedules.
Communicate the migration plan with your team and stakeholders.
Verify migrated resources in Grafana Cloud IRM before decommissioning your OSS instance.

Next steps

Get started with Grafana OnCall OSS

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 12:35:46 -0500

Get started with Grafana OnCall OSS

Grafana OnCall was built to help DevOps and SRE teams improve their on-call management process and resolve incidents faster. With OnCall, users can create and manage on-call schedules, automate escalations, and monitor incident response from a central view, right within the Grafana UI. Teams no longer have to manage separate alerts from Grafana, Prometheus, and Alertmanager, lowering the risk of missing an important update and limiting the time spent receiving and responding to notifications.

With a centralized view of all your alerts and alert groups, automated escalations and grouping, and on-call scheduling, Grafana OnCall helps ensure that alert notifications reach the right people, at the right time using the right notification method.

The following diagram details an example alert workflow with Grafana OnCall:

These procedures introduce you to initial Grafana OnCall configuration steps, including monitoring system integration, how to set up escalation chains, and how to set up calendar for on-call scheduling.

Grafana Cloud OnCall vs Open Source Grafana OnCall

Grafana OnCall is available both in Grafana Cloud and Grafana Open Source.

OnCall is available in Grafana Cloud automatically:

Create or log in into Grafana Cloud account
Sign in to your Grafana stack
Choose Alerts and IRM from the left menu
Click OnCall to access Grafana OnCall

Otherwise, to install Grafana OnCall, refer to Install Grafana OnCall OSS.

How to configure Grafana OnCall

Users with Admin role can configure Alert rules (Integrations, Routes, etc) to define when and which users to notify
OnCall users with Editor role can work with Alerts Groups and set up personal settings, e.g. how to notify.

Note: If your role is Editor, you can skip to Learn about the Alert Workflow.

Get alerts into Grafana OnCall and configure rules

Once you’ve installed Grafana OnCall, or accessed it from your Grafana Cloud instance, you can begin integrating with monitoring systems to get alerts into Grafana OnCall. Additionally, you can configure when, and which, users get notified, by setting templates, routes, escalation chains, etc.

Integrate with a monitoring system

Regardless of where your alerts originate, you can send them to Grafana OnCall via available integrations or customizable webhooks. To start receiving alerts in Grafana OnCall, use the following steps to configure your first integration and send a demo alert.

Configure your first integration

In Grafana OnCall, navigate to the Integrations tab and click + New integration.
Select an integration from the provided options, if the integration you’re looking for isn’t listed, then select Webhook.
Click How to connect to view the instructions specific to your monitoring system

Send a demo alert

In the integration tab, click Send demo alert, review and modify the alert payload as needed, and click Send
Navigate to the Alert Groups tab to see your test alert firing
Explore the Alert Group by clicking on the title
Acknowledge and resolve the test alert group

For more information on Grafana OnCall integrations and further configuration guidance, refer to Grafana OnCall integrations

Review and modify alert templates

Review and customize templates to interpret monitoring alerts and minimize noise. Group alerts, enable auto-resolution, customize visualizations and notifications by extracting data from alerts. See more details in the Jinja2 templating section.

Configure Escalation Chains

Escalation Chains are a set of steps that define who to notify, and when.

For more information, refer to Escalation chains.

Escalation Chains are customizable automated alert routing steps that enable you to specify who is notified for a certain alert. In addition to escalation chains, you can configure Routes to send alerts to different escalation chains depending on the alert details.

Once your integration is configured, you can set up an escalation chain to determine how alerts from your integration are handled. Multi-step escalation chains help ensure thorough alert escalation to prevent alerts from being missed.

To configure Escalation Chains:

Navigate to the Escalation Chains tab and click + New Escalation Chain
Give your Escalation Chain a useful name and click Create
Add a series of escalation steps from the available dropdown options.
To link your Escalation Chain to your integration, navigate back to the Integrations tab, Select your newly created Escalation Chain from the “Escalate to” dropdown.

Alerts from this integration will now follow the escalation steps configured in your Escalation Chain.

For more information on Escalation Chains and more ways to customize them, refer to Escalation chains

Routes define which messenger channels and escalation chains to use for notifications. For more information, refer to Routes.

Learn about the Alert Workflow

All Alerts in OnCall are grouped into Alert Groups. An Alert Group can have the following, mutually exclusive states:
Firing: Once Alert Group is registered, Escalation Policy associated with it is getting started. Escalation policy will work while Alert Group is in this status.
Acknowledged: Ongoing Escalation Chain will be interrupted. Unacknowledge will move Alert Group to the “Firing” state and will re-launch Escalation Chain.
Silenced: Similar to “Acknowledged” but designed to be temporary with a timeout. Once time is out, will re-launch Escalation Chain and move Alert Group to the “Firing” state.
Resolved: Similar to “Acknowledged”.

Possible transitions:

Firing -> Acknowledged
Firing -> Silenced
Firing -> Resolved
Silenced -> Firing
Silenced -> Acknowledged
Silenced -> Resolved
Acknowledged -> Silenced
Acknowledged -> Firing
Acknowledged -> Resolved
Resolved -> Firing

Transition changes trigger Escalation Chains to launch, with a few-second delay (to avoid unexpected notifications).

Get notified of an alert

In order for Grafana OnCall to notify you of an alert, you must configure how you want to be notified. Personal notification policies, chatops integrations, and on-call schedules allow you to automate how users are notified of alerts.

Configure personal notification policies

Personal notification policies determine how a user is notified for a certain type of alert. Get notified by SMS, phone call, Slack mentions, or mobile push notification. Administrators can configure how users receive notifications for certain types of alerts. For more information on personal notification policies, refer to Manage users and teams for Grafana OnCall

To configure users personal notification policies:

Navigate to the Users tab in Grafana OnCall
Select a user from the user list and click Edit
Configure Default Notifications and Important Notification

Configure Slack for Grafana OnCall

Grafana OnCall integrates closely with your Slack workspace to deliver alert notifications to individuals, user groups, and channels. Slack notifications can be triggered by steps in an escalation chain or as a step in users personal notification policies.

To configure Slack for Grafana OnCall:

In OnCall, click on the ChatOps tab and select Slack in the side menu.
Click Install Slack integration.
Read the notice and confirm to proceed to the Slack website.
Sign in to your organization’s Slack workspace.
Click Allow to allow Grafana OnCall to access Slack.
Ensure users verify their Slack accounts in their user profile in Grafana OnCall.

For further instruction on connecting to your Slack workspace, refer to Slack integration for Grafana IRM.

Grafana OnCall also supports other ChatOps integration like Microsoft Teams and Telegram. For a full list of supported integrations, refer to Notify people.

Add your on-call schedule

Grafana OnCall allows you to manage your on-call schedule in your preferred calendar app such as Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook.

To integrate your on-call calendar with Grafana OnCall:

In the Schedules tab of Grafana OnCall, click + Add team schedule for on-call rotation.
Provide a schedule name.
Configure the rest of the schedule settings and click Create Schedule

For more information about OnCall schedules, refer to On-call schedules.