Add escalation steps to a rule

Make an alert reach a second and third person when nobody acknowledges it, or when the first phone call fails.

In the sidebar, open Critical Alerts, then Setup, then Rules. The page address is /critical-alerts/rules. Press Edit on the rule, then scroll to Escalation.

An escalation step is a follow-up delivery that runs while the incident is still active: call the manager 10 minutes after the technician, then the owner 10 minutes after that.

Before you start

• Your admin has to give your role permission to manage critical alert rules.
• Create a destination for each person or group in the chain. See Add a destination.

Steps

1. Press Edit on the rule. The Edit rule drawer opens.
2. Under Escalation, choose the Timing anchor. Incident created time counts every delay from when the incident opened; Previous notification sent time counts from the last message sent.
3. Turn on Escalate on delivery failure if the next step should run right away when a phone call is busy, unanswered or fails.
4. Press Add escalation step. A Step 1 block appears.
5. Set Delay minutes (how long after the first delivery this step becomes due) and choose its Destination keys. Add a Webhook URL if another system should be told as well.
6. Set Repeat count and Repeat interval minutes if this step should try more than once.
7. Turn on Bypass quiet hours for steps that must deliver even during a destination's quiet hours; Continue after acknowledgment only if the chain should keep going after someone has claimed the incident; and Trigger on previous failure so this step runs when the previous call fails.
8. Press Add escalation step again for each further person. Use Move up, Move down and Remove to arrange them.
9. Save the rule with the button at the bottom of the drawer, then press Publish on the rule's row.

What you see

• Each step reads "Runs after the initial destinations when the incident is still active."
• With no steps, the block reads "No escalation steps. The rule will notify only the initial destination keys unless you add a follow-up step."
• The rule's row now shows the number of escalation steps after its destination keys.

If something looks different

• Steps never fire: the incident was acknowledged before the delay ran out, and Continue after acknowledgment is off. That is the usual and intended behaviour.
• A step fires sooner than expected: Timing anchor is Previous notification sent time, and a repeat notification reset the clock.
• Escalation runs on a timer. To push due steps through right now, see Run escalations and monitors now.

Open Rules