Escalate an alert

Alert escalation plays a crucial role in ensuring timely response to alerts. Sometimes, it becomes necessary to escalate alerts to the next level of responders or escalate them sooner than the scheduled escalation time. In such situations, you can use the “Escalate to next” action to effectively address the time-sensitive scenarios.

The "Escalate to next" action allows users to escalate an alert to the next available escalation rule immediately. This action is applicable when certain conditions are met:

The alert is currently not closed or snoozed.
The alert has at least one responder assigned through an escalation.
The ongoing escalation process has not been completed.

When an alert is escalated to the next escalation rule using the "Escalate to next" action, Jira Service Management processes the next available escalation rule right away, bypassing the remaining time for the current rule. This means that the next level of responders will be notified immediately, ensuring swift attention to the alert.

After executing the "Escalate to next" action, the alert's acknowledged state is reverted back to false, indicating that it requires attention from the escalated responders. This ensures that the alert is not overlooked or left unattended, enabling a prompt resolution.

In a typical scenario, where the escalation rules are scheduled at specific times, the "Escalate to next" action can accelerate the notification process. Let's consider an example where an alert was created at 7:48 AM, and the escalation rules are configured as follows:

First rule: 7:48 AM
Second rule: 7:53 AM
Third rule: 7:58 AM

When a user executes the "Escalate to next" action for the alert at 7:55 AM, the next available escalation rule is processed immediately. In this case, the user would be notified 3 minutes earlier than the scheduled time of the third rule, expediting the response time.