---
title: "Configure escalation policies | Grafana OnCall documentation"
description: "Configure escalation policies Set up escalation chains and routes to configure escalation behavior for alert group notifications. Configure escalation chains You can create and edit escalation chains in two places: within Integrations, by clicking on an integration tile, and in Escalation Chains. The following steps are for the Integrations workflow, but are generally applicable in both situations."
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> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

# Configure escalation policies

Set up escalation chains and routes to configure escalation behavior for alert group notifications.

## Configure escalation chains

You can create and edit escalation chains in two places: within **Integrations**, by clicking on an integration tile, and in **Escalation Chains**. The following steps are for the **Integrations** workflow, but are generally applicable in both situations.

You can use **escalation chains** and **routes** to determine ordered escalation procedures. Escalation chains allow you to set up a series of alert group notification actions that trigger if certain conditions that you specify are met or not met.

1. Click on the integration tile for which you want to define escalation policies.
   
   The **Escalations** section for the notification is in the pane to the right of the list of notifications. You can click **Change alert template and grouping** to customize the look of the alert. You can also do this by clicking the **Settings** (gear) icon in the integration tile.
2. Create an escalation chain.
   
   In the escalation pane, click **Escalate to** to choose from previously added escalation chains, or create a new one by clicking **Make a copy** or **Create a new chain**. This will be the name of the escalation policy you define.
3. Add escalation steps.
   
   Click **Add escalation step** to choose from a set of actions and specify their triggering conditions. By default, the first step is to notify a slack channel or user. Specify users or channels or toggle the switch to turn this step off.
   
   To mark an escalation as **Important**, select the option from the step **Start** dropdown menu. User notification policies can be separately defined for **Important** and **Default** escalations.

## Create a route

To add a route, click **Add Route**.

You can set up a single route and specify notification escalation steps, or you can add multiple routes, each with its own configuration.

Each route added to an escalation policy follows an `IF`, `ELSE IF`, or `ELSE` path and depends on the type of alert you specify using a regular expression that matches content in the payload body of the alert. You can also specify where to send the notification for each route.

For example, you can send notifications for alerts with `\"severity\": \"critical\"` in the payload to an escalation chain called `Bob_OnCall`. You can create a different route for alerts with the payload `\"namespace\" *: *\"synthetic-monitoring-dev-.*\"` and select a escalation chain called `NotifySecurity`.

You can set up escalation steps for each route in a chain.

> **NOTE:** When you modify an escalation chain or a route, it will modify that escalation chain across all integrations that use it.