An escalation policy is a predefined set of rules that determines who gets alerted about an incident and in what order. If the primary on-call responder doesn't acknowledge an alert within a specified time window, the alert automatically escalates to the next person or team in the chain.
A typical escalation policy has multiple levels. Level 1 might be the primary on-call engineer notified via push notification. If unacknowledged after 5 minutes, Level 2 escalates to a phone call. Level 3 might alert the engineering manager. Level 4 could page the entire team. The exact configuration depends on the severity of the alert and the team's response expectations.
Well-designed escalation policies ensure that no critical alert goes unhandled, even if the primary responder is unavailable. They also help reduce MTTA by creating urgency through escalation. Hyperping's escalation policies support multi-level escalation with configurable timeouts and notification channels.
