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

# Create an alert source

> Each monitoring tool gets its own ingestion URL and its own token.

The alert source is an external tool's entry point into aciona.me. It defines which organization owns the alert and how the payload is interpreted.

## Creating one

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open Alert sources and create a new one">
    Owners and admins can create sources.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Choose the type">
    The type determines which payload translator is used:

    `Generic` · `Grafana` · `Prometheus` · `Zabbix` · `Datadog` · `New Relic` · `CloudWatch`
  </Step>

  <Step title="Give it a clear name">
    Use something that identifies the real origin: `Grafana - production`, `Datadog - checkout`, `CloudWatch - account 1111`.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Copy the URL and the token">
    On save, aciona.me shows:

    ```bash theme={null}
    POST https://ingress.aciona.me/webhooks/<alertSourceId>
    X-Aciona-Token: <sourceToken>
    ```

    <Warning>
      The token appears **only once**. If you lose it, you have to rotate it — which means reconfiguring the external tool.
    </Warning>
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Best practices

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="One source per tool and environment" icon="split">
    Keep `Grafana - production` separate from `Grafana - staging`. That lets you disable a noisy origin without taking down the others, and keeps the audit trail clean.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Treat the token as a secret" icon="key-round">
    Store it like any credential: secret vault, environment variable, secret manager. Anyone holding the token can open incidents in your organization.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Deactivate instead of deleting" icon="power">
    An inactive source rejects alerts with `403` without losing the history already ingested.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

<Card title="Now connect your tool" icon="plug" horizontal href="/en/alert-sources/overview">
  Step-by-step guides for Grafana, Prometheus, Datadog, CloudWatch, Zabbix, New Relic and generic webhook.
</Card>