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Tips To Never Miss An Incident Notification With Squadcast Escalations Policies

Tips To Never Miss An Incident Notification With Squadcast Escalations Policies

October 27, 2023
Tips To Never Miss An Incident Notification With Squadcast Escalations Policies
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Problem At Hand

Companies implement an Incident Response process to promptly resolve critical issues. Setting up escalation policies to notify engineers is a key step in this process. With traditional escalation policies, alert notifications still get missed which results in higher response times and failure to meet SLAs

So, how can one ensure incident notifications are never missed?

Solution

To address this, organizations need to ensure that incidents get acknowledged and resolved within the specified timeframes. To avoid missing incidents implementing additional measures come in handy. For instance, regular reminders, advanced escalation policies, and keeping track of incidents notifications.

This can be done by implementing the following:

1. Escalation Layer Repetition

In the event of an incident, if nobody acknowledges the incident within the first set of notifications after 5 minutes, the escalation layer can be repeated.

This repetition involves sending notifications again to ensure that the incident receives attention.

In some cases, when incidents remain unacknowledged, L2 team or managers may need to manually review and call the primary team responsible for handling the incident. Repeating the escalation layer multiple times can decrease the likelihood of L2/P2 personnel picking up the incident.

This enables the On-Call team to never miss a notification and avoid potential delays in resolution.

2. Medium Of Notifications

Define how your On-Call engineers should be notified when an alert is triggered. This can be done in 2 ways:

  1. Custom: You as the Admin can define the medium of notification for eg: SMS, Phonecall, Email, Push (Mobile-app)
  2. Personal: You can let your fellow teammates specify their preferred medium of notifications under their Profile settings.

This flexibility allows you to ensure the On-Call engineer is definitely notified of an actionable alert.

An example Escalation Policy could be: 

  • Notify the On-Call engineer as soon as the alert comes in via SMS and Email.
  • If the On-Call engineer does not acknowledge within 5 mins then notify via Phone and Push notification
  • If the alert is not acknowledged in the next 5 mins then notify the Squad via Phone call and Push notification 

So on and so forth you can have multiple layers with the preferred medium of notification.

3. Adding Multiple Layers

Rules can be configured for incident notifications in a specific order to ensure efficient escalation:

  • For example, initially, within 0 minutes (i.e. immediately), the incident notification can be sent to the On-Call schedule via SMS.
  • If there is no acknowledgement within 5 minutes, it can be escalated to the same on-call schedule using different notification methods.
  • Multiple layers of escalation can be included within a single Escalation Policy.
  • The Escalation Policy can be designed to include numerous steps, with shorter time intervals between each rule.
  • This allows for a comprehensive and efficient escalation process that ensures timely attention to incidents.

4. Repeat the Entire Escalation Policy Multiple Times 

  • The policy can be repeated numerous times, ensuring comprehensive coverage. 
  • In the event of an incident, logs are presented to enhance accountability. Managers can access these logs and determine the time and status of received notifications. 
  • This makes it easy to track incident notifications and offers more transparency leaving no possibility of missed notifications going unnoticed.

(Please Note: You can repeat any Escalation Policy for a maximum of 3 times only.)

For more information on escalation policies, take a moment to dive into Squadcast escalation policies documentation. 

The Round Robin and Advanced Escalations can also ensure equitable distribution of escalations among team members, promoting fairness and balanced workload management. Checkout this video to know more.

Common Use Cases

  1. Critical Server Downtime in a Web Hosting Company

In a web hosting company, when a critical server goes down, Escalation Policy can be configured to notify the primary on-call engineer. If there's no response within a certain time frame (e.g., 5 minutes), it escalates the incident to a secondary engineer or the team lead. This ensures swift response and minimizes downtime, crucial for maintaining SLAs.

  1. Handling Outage in a Cloud Service Provider

For a cloud service provider, when there's an outage affecting multiple customers, the first layer of Escalation Policy can alert the first-line support. If the issue continues or impacts a significant number of clients, it can escalate to the incident management team. This guarantees that the provider responds promptly to minimize service disruption and meets SLAs.

Safeguarding Operations With Efficient Escalation Policy

By implementing these proactive measures such as custom notifications, optimizing escalation policies, and leveraging escalation layer repetition mechanisms, the risk of missing important alerts can be reduced significantly. 

Squadcast can help in achieving all the above and effectively navigate incident response challenges, minimize their impact, and deliver a superior customer experience.

Read More: Squadcast helped GrowthPlug improve Better clarity, improved & accountability

Written By:
October 27, 2023
Chitra Bisht
Chitra Bisht
October 27, 2023
On-Call
SRE
DevOps
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Squadcast is a leader in Incident Management on G2 Squadcast is a leader in Mid-Market IT Service Management (ITSM) Tools on G2 Squadcast is a leader in Americas IT Alerting on G2 Best IT Management Products 2024 Squadcast is a leader in Europe IT Alerting on G2 Squadcast is a leader in Enterprise Incident Management on G2 Users love Squadcast on G2
Squadcast is a leader in Incident Management on G2 Squadcast is a leader in Mid-Market IT Service Management (ITSM) Tools on G2 Squadcast is a leader in Americas IT Alerting on G2
Best IT Management Products 2024 Squadcast is a leader in Europe IT Alerting on G2 Squadcast is a leader in Enterprise Incident Management on G2
Users love Squadcast on G2
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Tips To Never Miss An Incident Notification With Squadcast Escalations Policies

Oct 27, 2023
Last Updated:
May 1, 2024
Share this post:
Tips To Never Miss An Incident Notification With Squadcast Escalations Policies
Table of Contents:

    Problem At Hand

    Companies implement an Incident Response process to promptly resolve critical issues. Setting up escalation policies to notify engineers is a key step in this process. With traditional escalation policies, alert notifications still get missed which results in higher response times and failure to meet SLAs

    So, how can one ensure incident notifications are never missed?

    Solution

    To address this, organizations need to ensure that incidents get acknowledged and resolved within the specified timeframes. To avoid missing incidents implementing additional measures come in handy. For instance, regular reminders, advanced escalation policies, and keeping track of incidents notifications.

    This can be done by implementing the following:

    1. Escalation Layer Repetition

    In the event of an incident, if nobody acknowledges the incident within the first set of notifications after 5 minutes, the escalation layer can be repeated.

    This repetition involves sending notifications again to ensure that the incident receives attention.

    In some cases, when incidents remain unacknowledged, L2 team or managers may need to manually review and call the primary team responsible for handling the incident. Repeating the escalation layer multiple times can decrease the likelihood of L2/P2 personnel picking up the incident.

    This enables the On-Call team to never miss a notification and avoid potential delays in resolution.

    2. Medium Of Notifications

    Define how your On-Call engineers should be notified when an alert is triggered. This can be done in 2 ways:

    1. Custom: You as the Admin can define the medium of notification for eg: SMS, Phonecall, Email, Push (Mobile-app)
    2. Personal: You can let your fellow teammates specify their preferred medium of notifications under their Profile settings.

    This flexibility allows you to ensure the On-Call engineer is definitely notified of an actionable alert.

    An example Escalation Policy could be: 

    • Notify the On-Call engineer as soon as the alert comes in via SMS and Email.
    • If the On-Call engineer does not acknowledge within 5 mins then notify via Phone and Push notification
    • If the alert is not acknowledged in the next 5 mins then notify the Squad via Phone call and Push notification 

    So on and so forth you can have multiple layers with the preferred medium of notification.

    3. Adding Multiple Layers

    Rules can be configured for incident notifications in a specific order to ensure efficient escalation:

    • For example, initially, within 0 minutes (i.e. immediately), the incident notification can be sent to the On-Call schedule via SMS.
    • If there is no acknowledgement within 5 minutes, it can be escalated to the same on-call schedule using different notification methods.
    • Multiple layers of escalation can be included within a single Escalation Policy.
    • The Escalation Policy can be designed to include numerous steps, with shorter time intervals between each rule.
    • This allows for a comprehensive and efficient escalation process that ensures timely attention to incidents.

    4. Repeat the Entire Escalation Policy Multiple Times 

    • The policy can be repeated numerous times, ensuring comprehensive coverage. 
    • In the event of an incident, logs are presented to enhance accountability. Managers can access these logs and determine the time and status of received notifications. 
    • This makes it easy to track incident notifications and offers more transparency leaving no possibility of missed notifications going unnoticed.

    (Please Note: You can repeat any Escalation Policy for a maximum of 3 times only.)

    For more information on escalation policies, take a moment to dive into Squadcast escalation policies documentation. 

    The Round Robin and Advanced Escalations can also ensure equitable distribution of escalations among team members, promoting fairness and balanced workload management. Checkout this video to know more.

    Common Use Cases

    1. Critical Server Downtime in a Web Hosting Company

    In a web hosting company, when a critical server goes down, Escalation Policy can be configured to notify the primary on-call engineer. If there's no response within a certain time frame (e.g., 5 minutes), it escalates the incident to a secondary engineer or the team lead. This ensures swift response and minimizes downtime, crucial for maintaining SLAs.

    1. Handling Outage in a Cloud Service Provider

    For a cloud service provider, when there's an outage affecting multiple customers, the first layer of Escalation Policy can alert the first-line support. If the issue continues or impacts a significant number of clients, it can escalate to the incident management team. This guarantees that the provider responds promptly to minimize service disruption and meets SLAs.

    Safeguarding Operations With Efficient Escalation Policy

    By implementing these proactive measures such as custom notifications, optimizing escalation policies, and leveraging escalation layer repetition mechanisms, the risk of missing important alerts can be reduced significantly. 

    Squadcast can help in achieving all the above and effectively navigate incident response challenges, minimize their impact, and deliver a superior customer experience.

    Read More: Squadcast helped GrowthPlug improve Better clarity, improved & accountability

    What you should do now
    • Schedule a demo with Squadcast to learn about the platform, answer your questions, and evaluate if Squadcast is the right fit for you.
    • Curious about how Squadcast can assist you in implementing SRE best practices? Discover the platform's capabilities through our Interactive Demo.
    • Enjoyed the article? Explore further insights on the best SRE practices.
    • Schedule a demo with Squadcast to learn about the platform, answer your questions, and evaluate if Squadcast is the right fit for you.
    • Curious about how Squadcast can assist you in implementing SRE best practices? Discover the platform's capabilities through our Interactive Demo.
    • Enjoyed the article? Explore further insights on the best SRE practices.
    • Get a walkthrough of our platform through this Interactive Demo and see how it can solve your specific challenges.
    • See how Charter Leveraged Squadcast to Drive Client Success With Robust Incident Management.
    • Share this blog post with someone you think will find it useful. Share it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Reddit
    • Get a walkthrough of our platform through this Interactive Demo and see how it can solve your specific challenges.
    • See how Charter Leveraged Squadcast to Drive Client Success With Robust Incident Management
    • Share this blog post with someone you think will find it useful. Share it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Reddit
    • Get a walkthrough of our platform through this Interactive Demo and see how it can solve your specific challenges.
    • See how Charter Leveraged Squadcast to Drive Client Success With Robust Incident Management
    • Share this blog post with someone you think will find it useful. Share it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Reddit
    What you should do now?
    Here are 3 ways you can continue your journey to learn more about Unified Incident Management
    Discover the platform's capabilities through our Interactive Demo.
    See how Charter Leveraged Squadcast to Drive Client Success With Robust Incident Management.
    Share the article
    Share this blog post on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit or LinkedIn.
    We’ll show you how Squadcast works and help you figure out if Squadcast is the right fit for you.
    Experience the benefits of Squadcast's Incident Management and On-Call solutions firsthand.
    Compare our plans and find the perfect fit for your business.
    See Redis' Journey to Efficient Incident Management through alert noise reduction With Squadcast.
    Discover the platform's capabilities through our Interactive Demo.
    We’ll show you how Squadcast works and help you figure out if Squadcast is the right fit for you.
    Experience the benefits of Squadcast's Incident Management and On-Call solutions firsthand.
    Compare Squadcast & PagerDuty / Opsgenie
    Compare and see if Squadcast is the right fit for your needs.
    Compare our plans and find the perfect fit for your business.
    Learn how Scoro created a solid foundation for better on-call practices with Squadcast.
    Discover the platform's capabilities through our Interactive Demo.
    We’ll show you how Squadcast works and help you figure out if Squadcast is the right fit for you.
    Experience the benefits of Squadcast's Incident Management and On-Call solutions firsthand.
    We’ll show you how Squadcast works and help you figure out if Squadcast is the right fit for you.
    Learn how Scoro created a solid foundation for better on-call practices with Squadcast.
    We’ll show you how Squadcast works and help you figure out if Squadcast is the right fit for you.
    Discover the platform's capabilities through our Interactive Demo.
    Enjoyed the article? Explore further insights on the best SRE practices.
    We’ll show you how Squadcast works and help you figure out if Squadcast is the right fit for you.
    Experience the benefits of Squadcast's Incident Management and On-Call solutions firsthand.
    Enjoyed the article? Explore further insights on the best SRE practices.
    Written By:
    October 27, 2023
    October 27, 2023
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