[Metrics UI] Handle "Alert on No Data" with action groups

[Zacqary]

Now that the Alerting plugin has implemented action groups, we should switch No Data alerts to their own action group instead of having them piggyback on the Fired group. This will improve compatibility with the Notify on status change setting, and be generally more idiomatic with how alerts seem to want to work.

This change could break backwards compatibility with existing No Data alerts. We should figure out a way to release it without having to wait for 8.0, either through a migration tool or by including residual code to allow the deprecated No Data alert system to still function. With 8.0 on the horizon, now is probably a good time to do this.

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/logs-metrics-ui (Team:logs-metrics-ui)

[Zacqary]

This is a bigger issue than just adding an action group. It would probably require some alert-wide UX overhaul, considering:

• The current UX of allowing No Data alerts is a simple checkbox
• Changing this to use an action group would make more sense for the alerting system internally, but it would significantly degrade the UX of creating an alert. Alternate action groups are hidden behind the multi-step process of having to create a new action, select the appropriate group from the dropdown, etc. etc.

We also want to enable No Data alerts by default, and have the user opt-out of them to turn them off. This is easy with a checkbox. This is currently impossible with a separate action group, as we cannot programmatically define action groups by default.

[Zacqary]

@elastic/kibana-alerting-services Are y'all tracking any issues that could be related to the above comment? The UI for creating actions is blocking us on moving functionality that ought to be handled by action groups, into action groups. Like for this No Data use case — which is a behavior we'd like to be opt-out, instead of opt-in — we're blocked by the fact that:

1. We can't configure an action for a certain action group by default
2. Action groups are only discoverable when the user clicks 3-4 times to create a new action, open the action groups drop-down, etc.

[mikecote]

@Zacqary I've found two issues touching the idea of no data (#67296 and #71503).

The usage of action groups for this use case makes sense. It's similar to what we've done with "recovered". The concept of opt-in by default is interesting, I'd be interested in hearing more about how # 1 would function. Regarding # 2, this may be a problem with the overall UX of action groups and could be iterated on with feedback from designers.

[roshan-elastic]

@katrin-freihofner - Wondering if this use case fits into anything you're thinking about? Remember where users were setting insanely high metric limits as a workaround to check for no data?

Wondering if this is duplicated elsewhere and should be closed.

We're unlikely to tackle this in the near future unless there is alignment with your team.

[katrin-freihofner]

Yes, we are thinking about a "no data" rule but it's not fully defined and there is no issue for that yet.

[roshan-elastic]

Cool - I'll close this issue as this issue won't get completed until it's a priority for your team (in which case, a new issue will be created - I'm sure we'll talk about it).

[roshan-elastic]

Actually - re-opening but I'll remove it from our backlog since it's not work we'll be initiating

[emma-raffenne]

This ticket is old and probably deprecated, feel free to reopen it if it is still relevant and needed.