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An escalation policy defines the chain of responders that scaling.cloud notifies when an incident is opened. Each layer targets an on-call schedule (or a specific set of users) and has an acknowledgment timeout. If no one on that layer acknowledges within the timeout, scaling.cloud moves to the next layer.
Managing policies from a script or pipeline instead? See the Escalation policies API guide.

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Prerequisites

  • At least one on-call schedule. See Set Up On-call if you haven’t created one yet.
1

Create a policy

Go to Escalation Policies in the dashboard (/escalation-policies) and click Create Policy. In the Create Escalation Policy dialog, give it a Name (e.g. Platform Default) and an optional Description, then click Save Policy. scaling.cloud opens the policy’s detail page, where you add layers.
2

Add escalation layers

On the policy detail page, click Add Layer and configure the Add Escalation Layer dialog:
  • Acknowledgment Timeout (minutes) — how long this layer has to acknowledge before escalation moves on (1 minute to 1 week).
  • Target Type — On-call Schedule or Specific Users.
    • For On-call Schedule, pick the schedule from the dropdown.
    • For Specific Users, check the team members to notify.
Click Save Layer. Add a first layer targeting your primary schedule with a short timeout (e.g. 5 minutes), then a second layer targeting a backup schedule or a manager with a longer timeout.
If no one acknowledges within a layer’s timeout, scaling.cloud notifies the next layer automatically. If all layers are exhausted without an acknowledgment, escalation stops but the incident stays open. Make sure your final layer targets a reliable fallback.
To gate a layer by time of day — page one team during their working hours and another otherwise — set its Working Hours Condition. See Follow-the-sun escalation.
3

Order the layers

Layers fire top to bottom. Use the Move layer up / Move layer down controls on each layer card to set the escalation order — the first layer is paged first, and each subsequent layer fires only if the one before it times out.
4

Page the policy from an incident

An escalation policy pages responders when it’s attached to an incident. The simplest path is to point a layer at an on-call schedule and then select that schedule as the On-call lead when you create an incident — paging follows the policy attached to that schedule. You can also check the Who would be paged right now preview on the policy detail page to confirm the chain resolves the way you expect.

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Next steps

Follow-the-sun escalation

Gate layers with working-hours conditions so a page reaches whoever is awake.

Configure Routing

Route inbound alerts to the right escalation policy automatically.