An immediate metric alert notifies you as soon as a matching metric sample arrives, with no aggregation window and no count threshold to reach. Use this type when a single data point already warrants attention, rather than a sustained breach over time.

## What you need

- Access to Coralogix with permission to create alerts
- Metrics ingesting into Coralogix, from sources such as [Prometheus](https://coralogix.com/integrations/prometheus/), [CloudWatch](https://coralogix.com/integrations/cloudwatch-metrics/), or metrics extracted from logs with [Events2Metrics](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/monitoring-and-insights/events2metrics/index.md)
- A PromQL query that returns the values you want to be notified about

## Create the alert

Go to **Alerts**, then select **Create alert**. The alert creation wizard opens on the Query step.

## Query step

In the wizard, select the **Immediate** alert type, then define the metric signal.

- Switch between **Builder** and **Query** to construct a PromQL expression. Builder lets you select metrics, filters, and functions without writing raw PromQL; Query mode shows the generated expression for direct editing.
- Group by metric labels with the `by` aggregation operator to evaluate and notify per label combination, for example `sum by(instance) (node_filesystem_size_bytes)`.

Because the immediate type fires on each matching sample as it arrives, the query defines the alert on its own: there is no window to aggregate over and no threshold to cross.

## Condition step

The Immediate type has no threshold and no evaluation window to configure. Each matching sample satisfies the condition, so the Condition step is minimal.

- **Priority**: assign **P1** through **P5**. Priority drives routing decisions in the Notification step.
- **Group by** (optional): evaluate separately for each combination of metric label values. Group by also controls whether matches open a combined or separate case, which you confirm in the Details step.

## Set routing and naming

Set routing and naming in the [alert creation wizard](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/alerting/configuring-alert-definition/index.md) Notification and Details steps.

When everything is in place, select **Create alert**. The alert becomes active within 15 minutes.

## Limitations

- New and edited alerts can take up to 15 minutes to become active.
- The number of group by permutations is limited to 1000; only the first 1000 are tracked when more exist.

## Related resources

[Configure alert definition](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/alerting/configuring-alert-definition/) [Metric-based query](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/alerting/metric-based-query/) [Notification Center](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/notification-center/introduction/)