---
key: add-a-critical-alert-destination
title: Add a destination
audience: staff
section: critical-alerts
routes: ["/critical-alerts/destinations", "/critical-alerts/destinations/new"]
permissions: ["critical_alerts.destinations.manage"]
features: ["critical_alerts.core"]
since: 0.0.1
updated: 0.0.1
status: published
summary: Set up who an alert reaches and how, from a phone call, text, email or push notification to a person, team, branch or on-call schedule.
keywords: [who gets called, phone number, recipient, notify, caller id, text alert, email alert, push notification, on-call, contact list]
related: [create-a-critical-alert-rule, create-an-on-call-schedule, publish-a-critical-alert-draft, critical-alerts-guide]
---

In the sidebar, open **Critical Alerts**, then **Setup**, then **Destinations**. The page address is `/critical-alerts/destinations`.

A destination answers "who, and how". A rule points at one or more destinations, and an escalation step can point at others.

## Before you start

- Your admin has to give your role permission to manage critical alert destinations.
- Phone calls and texts use one of your organization's phone lines; emails can use a connected inbox. Phone-call alerts also need voice delivery turned on for your organization.

## Steps

1. Press **New destination**. The **Create destination** drawer opens.
2. Type a **Name**. The **Key** fills in from it and cannot change later.
3. Choose the **Channel**: **Voice call**, **SMS**, **Email**, **In-app / push notification**, **Webhook**, or **Incident only** (open the incident, contact nobody).
4. Choose the **Destination kind**: a fixed **Phone number** or **Email address**, a **Specific user**, a **Team**, a **Branch**, a **Schedule** (whoever is on call), a **Schedule key**, or a **Webhook URL**.
5. Fill in the target the kind asks for. For **Specific user**, search your team; for a call or text the person needs a phone number on their profile.
6. For calls, choose the **Caller ID line**; for texts, **Send text from**; for emails, **Send email from**. Left blank, Nova uses its default sender.
7. Press **Create destination**. The destination is saved as a draft.
8. On its row, press **Publish** so rules can deliver to it.

## Options worth knowing

- **Voice playback overrides** lets one destination use a different **Voice**, **Read message** count, **Pause seconds** and **Ring timeout seconds** from your organization's defaults. **Keypad prompt overrides** rewords **Press 1 copy**, **Press 2 copy** and **Press 3 copy**; the digits stay the same, 1 acknowledges, 2 resolves and 3 snoozes.
- **Notification delivery** always creates an in-app notification; **Browser push** and **Mobile push** add to it. Leave **Respect user notification preferences** off when an alert must cut through opt-outs, and keep **Bypass notification quiet hours** on so delivery is immediate.
- **Routing helpers** fans one destination out to **Extra users**, **Teams**, **Extra branches** or **Extra schedule keys**.
- **Quiet hours**: turn on **Enable quiet hours**, then choose a **Mode** (**Defer** holds the alert until quiet hours end; **Skip** drops it), a **Timezone**, **Days**, **Start** and **End**.

## What you see

- Each row shows the channel and status, the target, the sender line or inbox, and a version line such as "Draft v1" or "Live v2 · Draft changes pending".
- **Edit** reopens the drawer. **Publish** is greyed out when nothing has changed since the last publish.
- **Version history** at the bottom of the edit drawer lists earlier live versions with a **Make live** button on each.

## If something looks different

- "Enter a valid phone number.": type the full number including the area code.
- A note says no active phone lines are available yet: Nova uses its default caller ID until your organization adds a line.
- **Create schedule destination** is greyed out on the guided setup: choose the on-call schedule first.

[[route:/critical-alerts/destinations|Open Destinations]]