# About alert rules **** This documentation topic is designed for Grafana workspaces that support **Grafana version 12.x**. 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 9.x, see [Working in Grafana version 9](using-grafana-v9.md). For Grafana workspaces that support Grafana version 8.x, see [Working in Grafana version 8](using-grafana-v8.md). An alerting rule is a set of evaluation criteria that determines whether an alert instance will fire. The rule consists of one or more queries and expressions, a condition, the frequency of evaluation, and the duration over which the condition needs to be met to start firing. While queries and expressions select the data set to evaluate, a *condition* sets the threshold that the data must meet or exceed to create an alert. An *interval* specifies how frequently an alerting rule is evaluated. *Duration*, when configured, indicates how long a condition must be met. The alert rules can also define alerting behavior in the absence of data. **Topics** + [Alert rule types](v12-alerting-explore-rules-types.md) + [Recording rules](v12-alerting-explore-rule-recording.md) + [Queries and conditions](v12-alerting-explore-rules-queries.md) + [Alert instances](v12-alerting-rules-instances.md) + [Namespaces, folders and groups](v12-alerting-rules-grouping.md) + [Alert rule evaluation](v12-alerting-rules-evaluation.md) + [State and health of alerting rules](v12-alerting-explore-state.md) + [Notification templating](v12-alerting-rules-notification-templates.md)