Create an escalation chain

In this milestone, you create a basic escalation chain as the next step of your alert flow.

Escalation chains define a sequence of notification steps for Alert groups: who gets notified, when they get notified, and what to do if an Alert group remains unacknowledged. A well-designed escalation chain ensures timely attention from the right people while avoiding unnecessary noise.

For this example, you configure the following escalation chain:

To create an escalation chain, complete the following steps:

1. In the IRM navigation menu, click Escalation chains.
2. Click + New escalation chain.
3. In Name, enter a descriptive name (for example, Production - Default).
4. (Optional) Assign the chain to a team.
5. Click Create Escalation Chain.

Configure the first step (schedule placeholder):

1. Click Add escalation step.
2. Select Notify users from on-call schedule.
3. Set the notification method to Default or Important.
4. Leave Select schedule empty. You attach the schedule in a later milestone.

Configure a wait and escalation step:

1. Click Add escalation step and select Wait.
2. Set Wait time to 5 minutes.
3. Click Add escalation step and select Notify all team members (or another escalation action).
4. Select a broader team (for example, Production SRE).
5. Set the notification method to Default or Important.

Associate the escalation chain with the integration:

1. Click Integrations.
2. Open your Grafana Alerting integration.
3. Expand the Default route in Routes.
4. In Trigger escalation chain, select the chain (for example, Production - Default).

IRM now routes alerts from this integration to the specified escalation chain.

In the next milestone, you create an on-call schedule for automatic notification to the current responder.