Escalation rules and call trees
Glassbreak Team · Published 2026-07-19
An alert that nobody sees is worse than no alert — it gives you false confidence. Escalation rules turn a one-shot message into a call tree: if a recipient doesn't acknowledge, Glassbreak automatically re-notifies them, on more channels, on a schedule you define, until they respond or the rule is exhausted.
Escalation rules are available on the Team plan and above.
How a rule is structured
A rule is an ordered list of steps (tiers). Each step says: this long after the original send, notify anyone who still hasn't acknowledged, on these channels.
- Step 1 is the initial blast — typically your fastest, least intrusive channels.
- Later steps add delay and widen the channel set. A common shape: push and email immediately; SMS after 10 minutes; voice call after 30.
- Channels available per step: SMS, email, push, and voice, delivered through the providers you've configured for the team.
Create a rule
- Go to Emergency → Escalation rules and choose New rule.
- Name it for the situation it serves ("Critical infrastructure", "Site evacuation").
- Add steps in order, setting each step's delay in minutes and channels.
- Optionally mark one rule as the team default. You can also attach a default rule to a message template so composers don't have to remember it.
Managing rules requires the escalation-rules team permission; any member can send messages that use them.
What happens after you send
Once a message with an escalation rule is sent, an escalation engine checks it every few minutes:
- For each recipient who hasn't acknowledged, it works out which tier they should be at based on time elapsed, and delivers the next tier's notifications if they're behind. A built-in guard prevents duplicate sends within a short window.
- The moment a recipient acknowledges — via the link in any notification — escalation stops for them. They will not be contacted again for that message.
- Escalated notifications are recorded as linked messages (
[Escalation 2] …), so the full chain is visible in the delivery log.
When nobody responds
If every remaining recipient exhausts every step without acknowledging, the message is marked complete and the sender is notified that escalation is exhausted. This is your signal to switch to out-of-band methods — the system will not loop forever, by design, so a stale incident doesn't keep paging people days later.
Test your rules with a drill before you rely on them: delays, channel availability, and contact data quality all show up immediately in a practice run.