IT incident alert management defines the detection, handling and resolution of critical, time-sensitive issues. On-call engineers receive immediate notifications to address incidents promptly. Support teams can meet their service-level agreements (SLAs), achieve customer service excellence and minimize the financial impact of IT downtime.
Incident alert management combines the power of intelligent alerting tools, ticketing systems and monitoring solutions. Integrations allow for quick incident detection and trigger notifications to the right person on call. Support teams leverage hardware (e.g., smartphones) and software as a service (SaaS) subscriptions to simplify critical event management.
The incident management process typically includes:
1. Incident Identification, Logging and Categorization
2. Incident Notification and Escalation
3. Investigation and Diagnosis
4. Resolution and Recovery
5. Incident Closure
Built around the incident resolution life cycle, OnPage helps IT teams reduce downtime and costs while improving coordination and performance. Discover how OnPage’s incident alert management system automates and accelerates the critical event management process:
OnPage automates the alerting process. Any system that sends an email notification can be integrated with OnPage. Here’s an example: A server experiences an issue. The monitoring system associated with the server is integrated with OnPage’s incident alert management system, which automates the alert to your on-call team.
OnPage users with access to the web console have an intuitive, flexible and easy-to-use on-call scheduler that can manage even the most complex employee, team and group calendar configurations. Features include the ability to organize teams into groups, define escalation orders, and create group schedules to override escalation orders.
OnPage’s on-call schedule exceptions come in handy when a user needs to switch on-call times with another engineer for a specific time frame or when a system administrator wants to make an exception to a recurring schedule for a date range.
OnPage’s escalation policy ensures that if an incident is not acknowledged or resolved within a pre-determined amount of time (Escalation Interval), it will be escalated to the next user. The order in which engineers are alerted as well as the Escalation Factor determines what condition stops the escalation (e.g., the alert is delivered, read or receives a response) can be adjusted.
Watch the video to learn more about escalation groups:
OnPage enables secure communication from smartphones, tablets and desktops. All messages, settings, images and notifications sync in real time across all devices. OnPage messaging technology, combined with engineers’ Android, iPhone or BlackBerry devices, guarantees nearly instantaneous, secure team communications.
OnPage messages can include images and voice attachments to enrich the message being sent so the end recipient can make informed decisions. Once the message is created, the user can select the priority of the message—Low or high-priority notifications. OnPage secure messaging works wherever engineers have cellular or wireless (Wi-Fi) coverage.
Once the incident team is alerted, they have the option to request for more help through the OnPage platform. They can send messages in two different formats: High-priority and low-priority alerts. OnPage’s unique ringtones and persistent alerts ensure that critical events get attention. High-priority, critical alerts can override the silent switch on all mobile devices.
Difference between priority levels:
Teams can see exactly when a message is read with OnPage’s full audit trails and message logs.
In the unlikely event that a message is sent to an escalation group and does not reach anyone in the escalation group, there are additional reporting options—failover to OnPage IDs (OPIDs) and escalation failover reports, which notify managers and ensure accountability.
This eBook provides insight into some of the best practices to communicate with the incident response team, employees and stakeholders, such as customers and vendors when an incident occurs.
