I am looking for a way to escalate my alert from P3 to P2 when it has not been closed for 4hrs.

[Sneha Manna]

Hi everyone,

We receive thousands of alerts in OpsGenie, most of which are autoclosed. We're looking to set up a system that escalates an alert from P3 to P2 if it hasn't been closed within 4 hours. Is there a way to achieve this? Our goal is to notify the team only when a P2 alert is triggered. While I can set priorities based on the message content, I'm struggling to do so based on elapsed time. Any suggestions?

[Egor]

Hey Sneha, 
Thanks for reaching out to Atlassian Community!

You can achieve this in Opsgenie by setting up Notification Policies and Escalation Policies.

First, navigate to your Opsgenie team and open the Policies tab. Then, select Notification Policies and create a new policy.

In the new notification policy, set your criteria so that it matches alerts with a priority of P3. Then add a delay action—set it to wait for 4 hours. After the 4-hour delay, configure an action to escalate the alert’s priority from P3 to P2.

Once the alert is escalated to P2, you can have a dedicated Escalation Policy triggered, notifying the responsible team or the on-call person.

This approach ensures your team is alerted only for alerts that haven't auto-closed within 4 hours.

Best Regards,
Egor

[Sneha Manna]

hey,
This seems to be exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.
However I see it works slightly off, could you pls help out.

1. I am setting up the delay for 30mins to test in Notification Policies

2. Then setting up an Alert policy:

For some reason I see this STOP, does not appear on my other escalations. 

Issue is: This Alert policy executes immediately and makes the alert P2, I need it to stay as P3 for the delay duration and then be set as P2 and relevant notification can follow.

[Egor]

Hey Sneha,

It looks like the Alert Policy is executing before the Notification Policy’s delay takes effect, which is causing the priority to change to P2 immediately instead of after 30 minutes.

You need to ensure that the priority change (P3 → P2) happens only after the 30-minute delay. Here’s how:

1. Use a Delayed Action Instead of Alert Policy

   • Instead of modifying priority in the Alert Policy, use a Delayed Action in the Notification Policy.
   • In Notification Policies, after the 30-minute delay, set the action to Modify → Change Priority to P2.

2. Rearrange Policy Execution Order

   • Make sure the Notification Policy runs before any Alert Policy modifying the priority.
   • This ensures the alert remains P3 for 30 minutes, then escalates to P2 if still open.

3. Avoid Using "STOP" in the Alert Policy

   • The STOP action prevents other alert policies from running.
   • If you need additional policies to execute later, remove the STOP condition unless necessary.

I hope this helps. 

Best Regards,
Egor

[Sneha Manna]

Hey,
I am intending to achieve this. However do not see this 'delayed action'

I am looking at Notification policy, where I find only Delay/Suppress notification.


Checked under Action Policies, which requests for an already preset Action. And when tried to set this Action, it is more like a channel integration that does not fit my case. 

Please help me where I may find this 'Delayed Action'

(Disabled the Alerts Policies)