Escalate alerts within a shift

The shift timeline allows you to space out notifications to shift members by allowing time for some members to respond to an alert before the remaining members are notified. This is accomplished by adding escalation delays to the timeline.

xMatters notifies shift members in the order they appear in the timeline. When xMatters encounters an escalation delay, it pauses notification delivery until the delay has elapsed. After this time has passed, xMatters then continues to send notification to the remaining members only if their participation is still required.

When xMatters encounters an inactive user, or a temporary absence without a defined replacement, it ignores the member and immediately notifies the next member in the escalation. If the escalation includes a delay after the inactive user or temporary absence, xMatters ignores the delay and immediately notifies the next scheduled member.

Escalations work in conjunction with rotations, which allow you to periodically rotate the members of the timeline. Depending on your license, you may not have access to advanced on-call group functionality such as rotations and escalations.

Example

In the following example, notifications sent to this shift are delivered immediately to both Malid Wright and Laqueta Lewis. If neither of these members handle the alert within 10 minutes, xMatters notifies the next two members, Angelique Simon and Demarco Washington. If nobody has handled the response within 50 more minutes (60 minutes total), xMatters notifies their manager, Vivan Chowhurdy. You can see that this shift rotates every week on Saturday. However Vivan (the manager) is not in rotation and always remains at the end of the escalation timeline.

About escalations

The following topics provide more detail about escalation delays and types and some of the limitations of using escalations.

Escalation delays cause xMatters to stop sending notifications for a certain length of time to give the previous recipients time to handle the notification. After an escalation delay has elapsed, xMatters continues notifying recipients only if their participation is still required. Timelines may begin with an escalation delay but cannot end with an escalation delay or contain more than once consecutive escalation delay.

Determining escalation delay length

When you design your escalation timeline, ensure that each escalation delay is long enough to give members time to respond to the notification but is not so long that it impacts the time it takes to resolve the alert.

Remember that shift members may have configured device delays and may not receive notifications immediately on all of their devices. If a user's device delays are longer than a shift's escalation delay, the notification could escalate before it is delivered to all of the user's devices. In this case, reports may show that a user did not respond to an alert when they simply did not receive the notification on an appropriate device.

To review escalation delays for a single on-call group member by viewing their identity card, see View user contact details.

The escalation type area allows you to categorize escalations into one of three categories:

  • None
  • Peer
  • Management

These categories are tracked for reporting purposes and do not correspond to roles within xMatters or have an effect on how an escalation functions. Your organization can assign its own meaning to these values and use them to represent different types of escalations.

Escalations and rotations are supported for shifts with less than 200 members.

If you would like to use escalations and rotations with a shift that has more than 200 members, you may be able to work around this limitation by dividing the group members into subgroups and adding each subgroup to the main on-call group.

Adjusting the shift timeline

You can add, remove, and reorder the members and escalation delays in the timeline.

The Shifts tab allows you to add a member directly to the shift timeline. From here you can adjust their location in the escalation order.

If you would like to add a member to multiple shifts you may want to use the on-call group roster, which allows you to view the shifts a member belongs to. For more information on the roster, see View and manage the on-call group roster.

To add a member to the timeline:
  1. Click the Shifts tab and select the shift that you want to configure.
  2. Start typing in the search bar (a minimum of two characters is required). A drop-down list appears that displays the available recipients you can select.

  1. Click the name of the recipient you want to add to the shift.
    1. The recipient is added to the shift, and appears at the end of the escalation order.
  2. If you do not want to add the recipient to the end of the timeline, drag them to a new location.

You can configure the shift's escalation timeline from the Shifts tab of the on-call group interface. From here you can add and remove escalations, set escalation delays, and reorder items on the timeline.

To add an escalation delay to the timeline:

  1. Click the Shifts tab and select the shift that you want to configure.
  2. Move the pointer over the timeline to where you want to add the delay and pause until the clock icon appears.

  1. Click the clock icon to create a new delay and then set the following options:

    • The number of minutes of the delay.
    • Optionally set the type of escalation, for example, Peer, Management, or None.

  2. When you are satisfied with the escalation timeline, click Save Changes. If there are any errors in the escalation timeline xMatters displays a red line at the location of the error.

You can remove a member or escalation delay from the timeline. Removing a member from their last shift also removes them from the on-call group.

If you would like to remove a member from multiple shifts or remove them from the on-call group, you may want to use the on-call group roster, which allows you to view the shifts a member belongs to. For more information on the roster, see View and manage the on-call group roster.

To remove a member or delay from the timeline:
  1. Click the Shifts tab and select the shift that you want to configure.
  2. In the member list, locate the member or delay that you want to remove, and click the X on the right side of the entry.

  1. Ensure that the timeline does not end with an escalation and does not contain more than one adjacent escalation.
  2. Click Save Changes.

If the shift is configured to use rotations, you can select which members are included in the rotation.

To exclude members from the shift's rotation, clear the In Rotation check box to the right of their name. (This check box only appears when rotations are configured.)

For more information about rotations, see Rotate positions within a shift