Grafana 8.2 introduces a new feature for testing contact points, allowing users to verify their configurations before alerts are triggered, enhancing the reliability of Grafana's alerting system. Contact points are configurations for various notification types, such as email or Slack, that receive alerts when triggered. The new feature includes a Test button on the contact points page, enabling users to send a test alert without the need to save or assign the contact point to a notification policy. Successful tests result in a green success message, while failed tests provide a red error dialogue with details. Additionally, an API endpoint is available for testing contact points programmatically, returning status information for each contact point tested. This testing feature is available in both Grafana 8.2 and Grafana Cloud, offering users a more robust alerting setup.