Escalation policy overview

An escalation policy is a custom set of rules for incident alerting, ideal for creating advanced incident alerting processes. It defines who will be alerted and in what order, continuing until the incident is acknowledged.

Creating an escalation policy

1. Navigate to Escalation policies.
2. Click Create escalation policy.
3. Name your escalation policy.
4. Configure the settings as outlined below.
5. Click Create escalation policy.

Escalation policy settings

Alerting

Choose who to alert, including options like:

• Specific team members
• Current on-call team
• Slack or Microsoft Teams integrations
• Zapier and Webhook integrations

Severities

Severities are customizable and allow for preset alerting methods applicable across multiple escalation policies. Severities require at least one escalation policy, so create your policy first. To create a new severity:

• Navigate to Escalation policies → Severities tab.
• Click Create severity.

Time-based rules

Specify conditions to stop the escalation policy or escalate to another policy at specific times.

Delay

Set a time delay using Wait for [ ] minutes before escalating to. The alerting flow will begin after the defined period.

Delay the escalation step until a specific time by clicking ... -> Wait until…

Metadata-based rules

Use metadata to define custom notification flows. This allows incidents to be routed based on metadata like severity or ownership, providing greater flexibility.

You can find more details in the Metadata in escalation policies.

Instructions & todo list

Insert a custom text with a list of tasks as a comment into the incident timeline automatically. This allows you to share a specific set of instructions or links, providing immediate context for on-call.

You can read more details in the Runbooks guide.

Multi-step policy

Add steps with the buttons below the last step. Each button adds a step of that type:

• + Escalate & alert to alert another schedule, team member, or integration if the previous step is not acknowledged.
• + Instructions & todo list to post instructions into the incident timeline.
• + Time-based rule to stop the escalation or hand it over to another policy at specific times.
• + Metadata rule to route the escalation based on incident metadata.
• + Resolve or remove to mark the incident as resolved or permanently remove it.

Rearrange steps by dragging them to a new position. Remove a step by clicking the x in its top-right corner.

Repeating policy

Set what happens when the policy runs out of steps at the bottom of the editor: If no one acknowledges, choose don't repeat or how many times to repeat, then escalate to a fallback policy.

Assigning an escalation policy

Creating an escalation policy does not apply it on its own. You need to assign it to the monitors, heartbeats, or integrations whose incidents it should handle.

Assign a policy to a monitor

1. Open the monitor and scroll to its on-call and escalation settings.
2. Select Escalation policy.
3. Choose the policy you created, or create a new one.
4. Save the monitor.

Assign a policy to several monitors at once

Select the monitors you want in the monitors list, then choose Configure on-call escalation from the bulk actions and pick your policy.

Heartbeats and integrations

The same Escalation policy option is available when you edit heartbeats, incoming webhooks, and email integrations. Assign a policy there the same way you do for a monitor.

What happens without an escalation policy?

If you leave a monitor on Notify the primary responder, Better Stack uses a simple escalation. It notifies the current primary on-call by e-mail, escalates to the rest of the team if the incident is not acknowledged, and triggers all of your integrations. This is why integrations such as Slack still notify you even when no policy is selected.