Acknowledge from the alert itself
When an escalation policy pages you by email or SMS, the message carries a link that acknowledges the incident from your phone.
What each destination carries
Section titled “What each destination carries”| Destination | What the message carries |
|---|---|
| Email to a paged responder | Acknowledge and resolve links, made for that person |
| SMS to a paged responder | An acknowledge link, made for that person |
| Email to a service target address | A link to the incident in Site Qwality |
| Slack channel | A link to the incident in Site Qwality |
| Webhook (chat or generic) | incident_url, a link to the incident in Site Qwality |
An action link acts without a login, so it only goes to the responder the escalation policy paged. Shared places (a Slack channel, a chat or generic webhook, a team address) get a link to the incident page instead, which needs you to sign in.
Acting through a link does what the API endpoints do, including canceling the escalation and any pending delayed pages.
Links in email and SMS
Section titled “Links in email and SMS”Each link has the form https://api.siteqwality.com/incident/action/<token>.
- Made for you. The incident records you as the person who acknowledged it.
- Works once. After you press the button, the link is used up.
- Expires 24 hours after the message is sent.
- Stops working when the incident changes. Once anyone acknowledges or resolves the incident, by any route, every outstanding link for it stops working. That includes the resolve link in the same email, so to resolve an incident you acknowledged, use the incident page.
Opening a link shows a confirmation page with a single button, Acknowledge incident or Resolve incident. Nothing changes until you press it.
The button stops email security scanners (Outlook Safe Links, Mimecast, Proofpoint and others), which open every link in a message, from acknowledging the incident with nobody awake.
| What you see | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Acknowledge incident / Resolve incident button | The link is valid. Press the button to act. |
| Incident acknowledged | Done. Escalation paging has stopped. |
| Incident resolved | Done. Escalation paging has stopped. |
| Link already used | The button on this link was already pressed. Nothing was changed. |
| Link expired | The link is more than 24 hours old. Nothing was changed. |
| Link no longer active | The incident was acknowledged or resolved after the link was sent. The page names its current state. Nothing was changed. |
| Link not recognized | The link is incomplete or altered. Mail clients that rewrite URLs are the usual cause. Nothing was changed. |
| Link retired | The link came from an older alert format that does not work. Nothing was changed. |
Every page links to the incident in Site Qwality, so you can act there instead.
A successful action appears in the customer audit log with your member identity, the incident and the source Action link. Opening the confirmation page or replaying a used link does not add a successful action entry.
- Treat the link like a password. Forwarding it lets someone else acknowledge as you. To hand an incident to a colleague, share the incident page instead.
- SMS carries the acknowledge link only. The URL is long, so an SMS page can span multiple segments and bill accordingly. If that matters more than one-tap acknowledgment, route pages through email or a push channel instead.
- Suspended accounts can still acknowledge and resolve, through these links and the API, so an account can always silence its own pager.
If a link cannot be created when the message is sent, the message carries the link to the incident page instead.
Monitor outage links
Section titled “Monitor outage links”These links are for incidents. The down alert email for a monitor outage carries its own acknowledge link, which acknowledges the outage and, if the outage opened an incident, the incident too. See acknowledge a monitor outage.
Slack channel messages show the service, severity, status and affected monitors, with a link to open the incident in Site Qwality. They carry no Acknowledge or Resolve buttons: everyone in the channel sees the message, so acknowledge and resolve from the incident page.
Older messages may still show Acknowledge and Resolve buttons. Do not rely on them.
Webhooks
Section titled “Webhooks”Incident webhook payloads carry incident_url, a link to the incident page, and no ack_url or resolve_url, because a webhook delivers to a shared system.