Set up personal notification rules

Notification rules are personal, and they apply to incident pages only: an escalation policy pages you, and your rules decide which contact methods fire and when. Monitor alerts go to notification groups and never read these rules (see who gets notified).

What you start with

A new user (sign-up, accepted invite or SCIM) starts with their sign-in email as a verified contact method and two rules on it: one high and one low, both with delay_minutes: 0. So they are paged by email at both urgencies until they change it.

Adding a contact method when you have no rule for an urgency creates one for you (see rules created for you).

In the dashboard, rules are under your personal settings: open the menu under your name (bottom left), choose Notifications, then Paging rules. Each rule shows as a step in the High urgency or Low urgency column, in delay order.

How a rule works

A rule has an urgency, a contact_method_id, a delay_minutes and a position.

urgency is high or low. You do not choose it per incident: critical and major incidents page at high urgency, minor at low.
delay_minutes is how long after you are paged the rule fires, 0 to 1440, default 0. When a delayed rule fires, Site Qwality first checks that the incident is still triggered, nobody has acknowledged it, and the rule still exists; otherwise it does not send.
position is sort order within the urgency. It does not stagger anything: every matching rule fires in the same pass, each after its own delay.

A user with no rule for the incident’s urgency, or whose rules all fail (an unverified SMS number, an email address that bounced), is paged at their sign-in email instead. The incident records an escalation_fallback_email event. See the sign-in email fallback.

Recommended high-urgency stack

Three rules at increasing delays: SMS at 0 minutes, Slack DM at 5, email at 15. SMS delivery is best-effort, so the later rules catch a message that did not arrive. Your starting high rule on your sign-in email is the third one; move it to 15 minutes instead of adding another.

Add the SMS number and the Slack DM first. A rule cannot use an SMS number until it is verified; email and Slack DM methods can be used straight away. Then, under Paging rules:

Under High urgency, click Add step. Under Reach me by, pick the SMS number; under Send it, pick Immediately. Click Add step.
Add a second step the same way: the Slack DM, at 5 min.
Click the pencil icon on your starting email step, pick 15 min and click Save changes.

Send it offers Immediately, 5, 10, 15 and 30 minutes and 1 hour, or a custom delay of up to 1440 minutes.

Through the API, with your user ID from GET /account/info as USER_ID, list your contact methods to get their ids:

curl https://api.siteqwality.com/user/$USER_ID/contact_method \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SITEQWALITY_API_KEY"

Then create the two rules and move the email one:

# 0 min: SMS me
curl -X POST https://api.siteqwality.com/user/$USER_ID/notification_rule \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SITEQWALITY_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "urgency": "high",
    "contact_method_id": "<sms-id>",
    "delay_minutes": 0,
    "position": 0
  }'

# 5 min: Slack DM me
curl -X POST https://api.siteqwality.com/user/$USER_ID/notification_rule \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SITEQWALITY_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "urgency": "high",
    "contact_method_id": "<slack-dm-id>",
    "delay_minutes": 5,
    "position": 1
  }'

# 15 min: email me (update the starting high rule)
curl -X PUT https://api.siteqwality.com/user/$USER_ID/notification_rule/<email-high-rule-id> \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SITEQWALITY_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "delay_minutes": 15, "position": 2 }'

position is required on create. On update, every field is optional and only the fields you send change. List your rules with GET /user/$USER_ID/notification_rule to find their ids.

Recommended low-urgency stack

For low urgency, one delivery to a low-impact method is enough. Your starting low rule (email, no delay) already does that.

Deleting your low rule does not stop low-urgency pages: with no rule, they go to your sign-in email. To keep them out of the way, point the low rule at an email address or Slack DM you check less often.

How the stack interacts with escalation

Escalation policy timeouts and personal-rule delays are independent timers. If an escalation level with a 5-minute timeout pages you at minute 0 and you have rules at 0/5/15 min:

Time	Event
0 min	Escalation level fires you. Your rule at 0 min fires (SMS).
5 min	Your rule at 5 min fires (Slack DM). Still no ack.
5 min	Escalation policy advances to level 2 and pages the next person.
15 min	Your rule at 15 min fires (email).

You’ll keep getting your full personal stack even after escalation has moved on. Acknowledging the incident at any point stops everything.