> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.scaling.cloud/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Acknowledge and Hand Off Incidents

> Acknowledge a page to stop escalation, or hand the incident off to another responder when you can't take it.

This guide shows the two everyday actions an on-call responder takes when they get paged: **acknowledging** the page and **handing it off** to someone else when you can't respond.

For an overview, see [Acknowledgment and handoff](/concepts/acknowledgment-and-handoff). Doing this from a script or pipeline? See the [Incidents API](/developers/incidents-api#acknowledge-and-hand-off-a-page).

<Frame caption="The On-call & Escalation panel with Acknowledge and Hand Off controls">
  <img src="https://mintcdn.com/scalingcloud/5-FlXcH6ySIwHzG0/images/placeholder.svg?fit=max&auto=format&n=5-FlXcH6ySIwHzG0&q=85&s=18ab9c45531fe92b117df1f9652cb357" alt="On-call & Escalation panel" width="1200" height="675" data-path="images/placeholder.svg" />
</Frame>

## Acknowledging

Acknowledging stops further escalation and records that you are on the page. The incident's status does **not** change — you progress it through `investigating` → `identified` → `monitoring` → `resolved` separately.

### From Slack

If Slack is connected and your email matches your scaling.cloud account, click **Acknowledge** on the alert message. The message updates in place:

> ✅ **Acknowledged** — 🔴 CRITICAL DB pool exhausted
> Acknowledged by Alice Smith · Apr 18 at 12:00:00

### From the dashboard

1. Open the incident detail page.
2. While the incident is actively paging, the **On-call & Escalation** panel shows an **Acknowledge** button. Click it.

The panel also shows the current **Lead**, the active **escalation layer** (e.g. `1 / 3`), and — once acknowledged — when it was acknowledged.

## Handing off

If you can't take the page — you're heads-down on another incident, off duty, or out of context — hand it off to someone else. There are two entry points, both opening the same hand-off form:

* **Change lead** — next to the **Lead** field in the incident header. Always available, even on manually created incidents that have no escalation policy attached yet.
* **Hand Off** — in the **On-call & Escalation** panel, available once the incident has been acknowledged.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open the hand-off form">
    Click **Change lead** next to the Lead field, or **Hand Off** in the On-call & Escalation panel.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Choose a recipient">
    Under **Hand off to**, pick a member of your org from the dropdown.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Submit">
    Click **Hand Off**. The new lead is paged immediately and the escalation timer restarts on the current layer.
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Warning>
  A handoff restarts the escalation timer for the new lead. If they don't
  acknowledge within the layer's acknowledgment timeout, escalation resumes from
  where it left off.
</Warning>

## What the audit trail records

Both actions are appended to the incident's paging audit trail:

| Event                   | What's recorded                                   |
| ----------------------- | ------------------------------------------------- |
| `incident_acknowledged` | Who acknowledged and when.                        |
| `incident_handed_off`   | Previous lead, new lead, who initiated, and when. |

You can read the audit trail from the incident detail page, or fetch it via the [Incidents API](/developers/incidents-api) — it's returned alongside the incident record.

<Tip>
  Always acknowledge first, even if you plan to hand off. Acknowledging stops
  the escalation clock and gives you a moment to pick the right recipient
  instead of rushing the choice while the next layer is about to be paged.
</Tip>