Each channel should have at least one escalation rule. Through escalation rules, alerts from different business units or teams can be assigned to appropriate handling groups and reach relevant responders through various channels, such as common IM applications, SMS, voice calls, or chatbots. Multiple notification levels and automatic escalation between levels are supported. When a channel has no escalation rules configured, alerts received in that channel will not trigger notifications.Rule Configuration#
Time Filtering#
By default, incidents at all times follow this rule for notification.
Supports assignment filtering by days of the week. For example, only handling incidents from Monday to Friday, excluding Saturday and Sunday.
Supports assignment filtering by service calendar (must be created in advance). Can be configured based on holidays or working days. For example, only notifying on trading days, typically used in the securities industry.
Incident Filtering#
By default, all incidents follow this rule for notification.
Supports matching incidents by title, severity, and labels. For example, alerts with Info severity follow this escalation rule.
Assignment Configuration#
Assignment Targets#
Personal: Specify certain members to receive alerts, supports multiple selection, no duplicate selections allowed.
Team: Specify teams to receive alerts, supports multiple selection. If team members overlap, notifications are sent only once to each member.
Schedule: Specify schedules to receive alerts, actual recipients are determined by on-duty personnel according to schedule rules. Supports multiple selection. If on-duty personnel overlap, notifications are sent only once.
Combination: Combine personal, team, and schedule selections.
Want to integrate with internal systems for dynamic assignment? Direct Message Channels#
Direct messages are one-to-one notifications, such as email, SMS, voice calls, and certain IM applications.Follow Personal Preferences: Notification methods are determined by members' Account Settings for different alert categories. Follow Unified Settings: Rule configurators set unified notification channels and methods for all target members.
Group Chat Channels#
Group chat notifications are sent to groups with special mentions for assigned responders. This includes various webhook bots and certain IM applications.Group chats can use various applications and group bots to reach recipients. When selecting IM application notifications, notification targets must first be associated with corresponding applications. For details, refer to Instant Messaging Integration Please select at least one channel between personal and group chat notifications. If you don't want to notify individuals and only notify groups, you can set an empty team as the assignment target.
Loop Notification#
Loop notification is disabled by default, meaning identical incidents are notified once. If enabled, additional notifications will be sent beyond the default count. Please configure notification counts reasonably.
If an incident is acknowledged, loop notifications will stop even if the notification count hasn't been reached.
Escalation#
To ensure incidents are handled, we can set automatic escalation when incidents remain unclosed after a timeout by configuring multiple levels.
You can choose to escalate automatically when an incident is either unclosed or unacknowledged after timeout.
Typical scenarios include escalation between primary and backup on-call staff, between different management levels, or between first and second-line support.
Rule Order Adjustment#
With multiple escalation rules, matching occurs sequentially during assignment notification, stopping at the first match. Consider assignment conditions carefully during configuration.
Rule order can be adjusted by dragging and dropping. Changes take effect immediately, so please operate with caution.
If you need multiple escalation rules in one channel and want to ensure every incident gets notified, it's a good practice to set up a catch-all escalation rule without any filtering conditions.
We don't recommend setting up an overly large channel, especially using a single channel to manage all alerts for a large business. This would require maintaining many different escalation rules, making long-term maintenance burdensome, more chaotic, and error-prone.
Rule Configuration Principles#
Standard escalation rule configuration should consider these aspects:1.
Capability Matching: Ensure notification targets have the ability and authority to handle channel alerts. This means only relevant personnel or teams receive alerts related to their work, avoiding sending irrelevant alerts to unrelated personnel.
2.
Multi-Channel Notification: Use multiple notification methods to ensure targets receive alert information promptly. For example, send notifications through SMS, email, instant messaging tools, etc., to improve timeliness and reliability, but different severity levels should use different notification methods to avoid message overload.
3.
Alert Escalation Mechanism: When alerts remain unacknowledged or unhandled for extended periods, appropriate escalation mechanisms should be in place. This can involve automatically escalating alerts to next-level handlers or teams, or sending alerts to multiple levels of handlers to ensure timely processing.
FAQ#
How to troubleshoot when alerts are generated but no notifications are received?
Go to Incident Details => Timeline to check if the notification process and channel status are normal. If failed, failure information will be available for reference. For more reasons, contact technical support for assistance.Why don't notification methods match my personal preferences?
Flashduty direct message channels support two settings: "Follow Personal Preferences" and "Follow Unified Settings". Only under "Follow Personal Preferences" will notifications follow your personalized settings.Check your specific settings in Channel Details => Escalation Rules. 