How to prioritize alerting people in the best time zone

[John Baumbach]

We have some members in the team in UST and some members in PST. They are all in the same Team, which has a time zone of PST. The users' time zones are set properly.

An alert went off at 3 AM PST, but it went to all members simultaneously. We want it to go to people in UST first at that time, and then escalate to the PST team if it's not acknowledged after x minutes. 

Conversely, if an alarm goes of at 4 PM PST, it should go to the PST team first, and not the UST team until x mins. 

It's confusing from the documentation how best to set this up. Is it separate teams? With different escalation policies? But how to swap the team that is alerted first based on when the alert happens?

[Darryl Lee]

Hi @John Baumbach ,

This is Darryl, I am here to help.

Understand that you would like to have your escalations based on the time an alert is created.

In your case, I would suggest separating those teammates who are based in UST and PST into two different timezones individually and incorporating the 2 different Routing Rules of the team to set up the time constraints and the 2 Escalation Policies to triage.

For Schedules

Please add two individual schedules with the timezone set up correctly and add the team members from these 2 different timezones into the right schedules.

For example:

For Escalation Policy

Please add 2 different Escalation policies for handling 2 different escalation paths for your descripitons:

An alert went off at 3 AM PST, but it went to all members simultaneously. We want it to go to people in UST first at that time, and then escalate to the PST team if it's not acknowledged after x minutes. 

Conversely, if an alarm goes of at 4 PM PST, it should go to the PST team first, and not the UST team until x mins. 

For example:

For Routing Rule

This is where the time constraints are set.

Please add at least 1 Routing Rule to set up the time constraint for 3AM to 4PM PST and route the alerts to the Escalation policy you set up for handling the alerts created at 3AM PST.

For example:

At the end of the setup, the screen should be looking like this:

Whenever an alert is created between 3AM-4PM PST and assigned to this team

-> Opsgenie routes this alert to the 3AM PST escalation policy following the Routing Rule

-> and this 3AM PST escalation policy will firstly route the alert to the on-call user at 3AM PST Schedule

-> if not acknowledged within 10 mins, the alert will be escalated to the on-call user in 4PM PST Schedule.

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The main concept here is to follow this sequence: Routing Rule with time constraints -> Escalation Policy -> On-call Schedule for triaging the alerts properly.

Please adjust the details that are close to your actual condition and expectation.

Here I attach some useful documents for your reference:

Alert Notifications Flow

Configure a team dashboard

Should you have any further inquiries or issues, please feel free to reach out to Opsgenie Support Team and my colleague will help you from there.

[John Baumbach]

Hi, thanks for the walkthrough. I was able to get most of it done, but unfortunately hit a snag at the end.

For your last screenshot, I got the "If" part to work ok, but for the "Else" part, I'm unable to select the other escalation I created. It's not available in the drop-down list and there's no way to type it in.

What am I doing wrong?

-JB

[Darryl Lee]

Hi @John Baumbach ,

Awesome, you're almost there!

For the ELSE part of the Routing Rules, as long as you've created the Escalation policy within the same Team, it should be listed in the dropdown list upon clicking the field.

It could be helpful for having your browser's cache/cookies cleared or try on another browser to see if it works.

If you are still not able to find the escalation policy that you've created for the same team, please reach out to Opsgenie Support for further assistance.

Thanks.

Kind regards,
Darryl Lee
Support Engineer, Atlassian

[John Baumbach]

Ah ha, I created separate UST and PST teams and added THOSE to the schedules. You mentioned:

"Please add two individual schedules with the timezone set up correctly and add the team members from these 2 different timezones into the right schedules."

I couldn't figure out how to do that since you can only add teams to a schedule, not individuals. Any advice about that part?

Also - you don't mention rotations but are those involved somehow? 

[Darryl Lee]

Hi @John Baumbach ,

From your original description, I thought they are all on the same team.

To simplify the scenario, I would suggest putting them into the same team and using 2 different On-call schedules with different timezone setups to separate them.

---

Sorry that I didn't make it clear. By mentioning the configuration related to Schedules, I mean adding the users into Rotation., and you may add the Team as Responders in each of the Rotation.

For example:

---

In your case, my suggestion is to:

1. Put all your users into the same team, which means, one team only.

2. Create 2 On-call Schedules with the correct timezone setup to separate those users.

3. Add 1 Rotation to each of the On-call Schedules, and add the users into the corresponding On-call Schedule's Rotation by timezone.

i.e. Add 1 Rotation into PST_Schedule and 1 Rotation into UST_Schedule, and add those users in the PST timezone into the Rotation of the PST_Schedule, and vice versa.

4. Add 2 different Escalation policies within the same team for handling the 2 different escalation paths mentioned in your description.

5. Add a Routing Rule to the same team that has the time constraint configured matching one of your expected escalation paths and set it to route alerts to the expected Escalation Policy, while leaving the ELSE condition pointing to the other Escalation policy.

---

If you are still not able to configure this solution successfully, please reach out to Opsgenie Support for further assistance.

Thanks.

Kind regards,
Darryl Lee
Support Engineer, Atlassian

[John Baumbach]

OK, I think it's working, thanks for your help!