Receiving an incident
When an escalation policy assigns an incident to you, Oppex contacts you straight away through the contact methods that policy uses. This section explains each channel, what it says, and which actions you can take from it without opening Oppex.
The contact methods are set on the escalation policy, not by each responder. Everyone paged by the same policy is contacted the same way. Your workspace administrator decides which methods policies can use. See Set up how you are paged.
What each channel lets you do
| Channel | What you receive | Actions you can take from it |
|---|---|---|
| Phone call | An automated voice call to your contact number | Acknowledge (press 1) or snooze (press 2) |
| SMS | A short text message with the incident title | None. Open Oppex to act. |
| A message with the incident title and ID | Acknowledge | |
| An email with the incident details | Acknowledge, and resolve unless your organization requires a root cause analysis (RCA) | |
| Mobile app | A push notification and a full-screen alarm | Acknowledge, snooze, and resolve |
| Slack | A post in your service's Slack channel, not a direct message | None. The post links to the incident. |
The mobile app is the exception to the policy rule: Oppex sends a push notification to every device where you are signed in to the Oppex app, whichever methods the policy uses.
How paging works
- The incident is assigned. When an incident opens, Oppex looks up the escalation policy for its service and severity and assigns it to the person on call at the first level. The policy can wait before this first assignment: Immediately, or after 5, 10, or 15 minutes.
- Oppex contacts you. Oppex sends every contact method on the policy at the same time, together with the mobile push notification.
- Reminders. If you do not acknowledge, Oppex contacts you again through every method, up to the number of reminders set on the policy (No reminders, 1 Time, or 2 Times). Reminders are spread evenly across the level's Escalate After time. For example, a level that escalates after 15 minutes with two reminders contacts you at 0, 5, and 10 minutes.
- The next level. When the level's time runs out, Oppex assigns the incident to the next level and contacts that person. The previous person is not contacted again.
- Looping. After the last level, Oppex starts again from the first level if the policy has looping turned on. New policies loop 3 times.
Acknowledging the incident stops this sequence. See Acknowledge.
If a schedule changes after an incident opens, Oppex still pages the people who were on call when it opened. When a schedule layer notifies everyone on call, every one of them is contacted at that level.
When nobody is paged
An incident may open without paging anyone:
- The service's settings map the incident's severity to not escalate.
- The incident arrives outside the service's business hours, and the service waits until business hours for that severity.
- A maintenance window or a mute is active for the service. Oppex resolves the incident automatically. See Mute.