Escalation Policies in OpsDuty

Escalation policies define how OpsDuty notifies individuals when a new incident enters the triggered state. These policies determine who should be notified and how long OpsDuty should wait before escalating to another set of individuals. However, they do not configure how individuals are notified—that is managed by their personal notification settings.

Escalation Policy Steps

An escalation policy can include one or more steps, which OpsDuty executes in the order they are defined. The following types of steps are available:

• Notify: Notify specific individuals, team members, or people from an active shift in a schedule. You can also configure the notification channel to be used for sending notifications.
• Notify if number of events in time window: Pause the execution of the escalation policy unless a certain number of incident events occur within a specified time window.
• Notify if time: Continue executing the escalation policy step if the current time falls within the specified time window. If the time is outside the window, the policy execution pauses.
• Repeat escalation: Return to the first step of the escalation policy. This step can repeat up to five times. If the policy has already looped through five cycles, this step becomes a no-op.
• Resolve: Automatically resolve the incident when this step is executed.
• Wait: Pause for a specified number of minutes before executing the next step in the escalation policy.

The two most commonly used types are the Notify and Wait policy steps.