Alerts & Notifications

    Escalation Policies

    Build multi-step escalation policies so alerts reach the right person, in the right channel, at the right time.

    Updated 2026-06-15
    2 min read
    escalation
    policy
    on-call

    Escalation Policies#

    An escalation policy is an ordered list of steps. When an incident fires, LemWatch runs step 1, waits, runs step 2, waits, and keeps going until somebody acknowledges the incident or the policy runs out of steps.

    When to use one#

  1. You want different people paged at minute 0, minute 5, and minute 15
  2. You want email first, Slack second, SMS/webhook last
  3. You run on-call rotations and need a fallback if the primary doesn't ack

    4. Build a policy#

  4. Open Settings → Notifications → Escalation Policies
  5. Click New policy, give it a name (e.g. "Production on-call")
  6. Click Add step and fill in:
  7. Step order — the position in the sequence (1, 2, 3 …)
  8. Wait minutes — how long to wait before this step fires (step 1 is usually 0)
  9. Channel — email, Slack, Discord, webhook, etc.
  10. Recipient — an email address, or a webhook URL (see Step channels)
  11. Save and attach the policy to a site under Edit Site → Notifications → Escalation policy

    12. Step ordering & uniqueness#

    Each step needs a unique step_order within the policy. The editor auto-suggests the next number (max existing + 1) so adding a step after deleting one in the middle still works. If you manually enter a number that's already taken, the editor shows "Step #N already exists in this policy" instead of a raw database error.

    Acknowledging stops escalation#

    The moment any teammate clicks Acknowledge on the incident, all remaining steps are skipped. The notification engine now also skips already-acked incidents at query time, so escalation work doesn't pile up. See Acknowledging incidents.

    Editing an existing policy#

  12. Reorder steps by editing step_order values
  13. Change channel or recipient on any step
  14. Delete a step — the next save renumbers cleanly
  15. Delete the whole policy — sites that referenced it fall back to their default channels
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    Escalation Step Channels

    Related Articles

    Escalation Step Channels

    How each step in an escalation policy maps to a channel — email, Slack, Discord, generic webhook — based on the Recipient value.

    Acknowledging Incidents

    Click Acknowledge on an incident to stop escalation, claim ownership, and let teammates know you are on it.

    Setting Up Alerts

    Configure 11 notification channels — email, push, chat, on-call, and automation tools.

    Custom Webhook Integration

    Send alert data to any HTTP endpoint via custom webhooks. Slack and Discord URLs are auto-routed when used in escalation steps.

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