Definition:

A critical alert is typically an alert placed at a higher priority level than an alert that comes into the service desk because, for example, someone forgot their password.

How OnPage prioritizes critical alerts:

A high priority message triggers a loud, intrusive, hard to ignore Alert-Until-Read tone. OnPage alerts mimic the pager urgency but also enables a rich, full text message with voice or picture attachments. Designed for critical, time-sensitive situations, the OnPage alert assures the sender that the message has reached its destination and was read. A good use of the High Priority feature is to use it for time-sensitive messaging, urgent messaging, medical emergencies, and critical alerts coming in from monitoring tools.

An alert escalation or escalation policy makes sure that if an incident is not acknowledged or resolved within a pre-determined amount of time, it will be escalated to the correct user(s). You can customize who you want to receive the alert, the amount of time to wait before escalating to the next user(s), and which user(s) the alert should be escalated to.

When is an escalation policy useful? Imagine that you have an on-call team monitoring critical systems. In the event of an incident, an alert is sent out either by a fellow team member or one of the monitoring tools connected to the hundreds of end points being monitored. If this alert is not acknowledged, what happens to it?

This is a general scenario in which OnPage is used, especially by our MSP customers. The OnPage Scheduler allows MSPs to schedule on-call teams and allows for automated triggers for the alert to be sent to an escalation team.

In this video, learn how OnPage allows administrators to create escalation groups on its cutting-edge web management console and modify escalation orders if there’s a change in on-call resource availability.