# Sentry Alerts and Dashboards

## Get started with Sentry alerts and dashboards to monitor key metrics, track issue trends, and gain real-time insights into your application's performance.

By the end of this guide you'll be able to create and customize Sentry alerts and dashboards to monitor key metrics, track issue trends, and gain real-time insights in to your application performance. If you get stuck anywhere, try [asking Sentry AI](/?askAI=true) or join our [Discord](https://discord.gg/sentry) community.

## [1. Alerting Strategy](#1-alerting-strategy)

After [integrating with Slack](https://sentry-docs-git-ob-alerts.sentry.dev/organization/integrations/notification-incidents/slack/) and adding your members and teams, it's time to create [Sentry alerts](/product/alerts/best-practices/) to ensure real-time issue detection, enabling faster debugging and reducing downtime. Configuring alerts using specific thresholds or conditions helps prioritize problems, improving system reliability and incident response time.

### [Alert Recommendations](#alert-recommendations)

* **Error Alert (High-Frequency)** - Triggers when a new or existing production issue suddenly spikes in frequency.

- **Performance Alert** - Detects and alerts for specific performance metrics when they exceed a specified threshold.

* **Crash Rate Alert** - Monitors application stability by tracking the percentage of users experiencing crashes within a given time frame.

- **Anomaly Detection** - Sentry can simplify your alerting needs by automatically detecting anomalies and proactively alerting you.

You can also create metric alerts for all you custom-instrumented transactions/spans based on key performance indicators such as [throughput](/product/alerts/alert-types/#performance).

## [2. Sentry Dashboards and Discover](#2-sentry-dashboards-and-discover)

Setting up Sentry dashboards is crucial for speeding up triage and offering a real-time view of critical issues, trends, and performance in your app. If an irregularity is observed, Sentry dashboards allow users to jump directly into troubleshooting with a few clicks.

### [Recommended Dashboards](#recommended-dashboards)

1. **Error Overview Dashboard** - Provides a high-level view of application health, showing you error trends, most frequent issues, and spikes in error occurrences.

2. **Performance Monitoring Dashboard** - Tracks transaction durations, slow API calls, and database query performance to identify bottlenecks.

3. **Mobile Crash Rate and Release Health Dashboard** - Monitors application stability and release impact by tracking crash rates across different versions.

4. **Critical Experience Dashboard** - Tracks errors or performance bottlenecks in your application's critical experiences. [See an example](https://sandbox.sentry.io/dashboard/126679/).

### [Congratulations on completing the Sentry onboarding guide!](#congratulations-on-completing-the-sentry-onboarding-guide)

You now have the foundation to make the most out of Sentry. Here are some highlights on what you've implemented:

* **Track errors** and performance by connecting projects and integrating your tools.

* **Add custom context** and performance instrumentation.

* **Stay on top of critical issues** with alerts.

* **Create dashboards** for insights, and filter or group issues for easy tracking.
