# Manage your alert notifications **** This documentation topic is designed for Grafana workspaces that support **Grafana version 9.x**. For Grafana workspaces that support Grafana version 12.x, see [Working in Grafana version 12](using-grafana-v12.md). For Grafana workspaces that support Grafana version 10.x, see [Working in Grafana version 10](using-grafana-v10.md). For Grafana workspaces that support Grafana version 8.x, see [Working in Grafana version 8](using-grafana-v8.md). Choosing how, when, and where to send your alert notifications is an important part of setting up your alerting system. These decisions will have a direct impact on your ability to resolve issues quickly and not miss anything important. As a first step, define your *contact points*; where to send your alert notifications to. A contact point can be a set of destinations for matching notifications. Add notification templates to contact points for reuse and consistent messaging in your notifications. Next, create a *notification policy*, which is a set of rules for where, when and how your alerts are routed to contact points. In a notification policy, you define where to send your alert notifications by choosing one of the contact points you created. Add mute timings to your notification policy. A *mute timing* is a recurring interval of time during which you don’t want any notifications to be sent out. When an alert rule is evaluated, the alert ruler sends alert instances to the Alertmanager — one alert rule can trigger multiple individual *alert instances*. The Alertmanager receives these alert instances and then handles mute timings, groups alerts, and sends notifications to your contact points as defined in the notification policy. **Topics** + [Alertmanager](v9-alerting-managenotifications-alertmanager.md) + [Working with contact points](v9-alerting-contact-points.md) + [Working with notification policies](v9-alerting-notification-policies.md) + [Customize notifications](v9-alerting-notifications.md) + [Silencing alert notifications for Prometheus data sources](v9-alerting-silences.md) + [Mute timings](v9-alerting-notification-muting.md) + [View and filter by alert groups](v9-alerting-viewfiltergroups.md) + [View notification errors](v9-alerting-viewnotificationerrors.md)