Notification Rules

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Overview

Notification Rules define how Rootly reaches you when an alert is assigned to you. They’re evaluated as an ordered sequence of steps — if an alert stays unacknowledged, Rootly moves to the next step and keeps going until someone responds or the escalation path completes. You configure Audible and Quiet rules separately so urgent pages can behave differently from informational ones: hard-to-miss for production issues, low-noise for signals that shouldn’t wake anyone up. Open Account Settings → Notifications → On-Call Notifications to manage everything on this page.

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Delivery Methods

Rootly supports several delivery methods for notification rules, each with a slightly different purpose:

• Critical Alerts — device push intended to bypass Do Not Disturb.
• Push Notifications (non-critical) — device push that respects Do Not Disturb.
• Phone call — audible fallback.
• SMS — reliable secondary channel.
• Email — typical quiet channel.

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Audible Rules

Audible rules are your wake-me-up configuration — the sequence Rootly runs through when an alert needs immediate action. Rootly enforces guardrails on audible rules because urgent paging is only useful if it can’t be configured into a silently-broken state. In other words: Rootly won’t let you save an audible policy that can’t actually reach you.

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Step 1 Requirements

The first step of an audible rule must include a real-time delivery method that matches your device state:

• If you have a connected mobile device, Critical Alerts are required on step 1.
• If you don’t have a connected mobile device, a phone call is required on step 1.

Rootly won’t let you save a level 1 audible step that doesn’t meet the requirement for your current setup, so urgent alerts can’t be configured into a state where they silently fail to reach you.

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Subsequent Steps

Level 2 and beyond still need at least one of Critical Alerts or Phone Call enabled — Rootly won’t let escalation become “quiet” by accident. Beyond that requirement, later steps can add SMS or email alongside Critical Alerts or a phone call.

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Quiet Rules

Quiet rules are for alerts that still matter but shouldn’t force immediate interruption. They still escalate through steps, but the intent is different: keep responders informed without waking anyone up unless it’s truly necessary. Email, SMS, and non-critical push are the typical quiet channels. Non-critical push is especially useful when you want the alert on someone’s phone without cutting through Do Not Disturb.

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Making Quiet Notifications Audible on a Silenced Phone

By default, Quiet push respects both Do Not Disturb and silent mode — it arrives on the phone but stays silent when the device is silenced. That’s the intent. If you want quiet pushes to ring through silent mode and DND without reclassifying them as audible, enable Critical Alerts on the device contact method inside the Quiet notification rule itself. Navigation: Account Settings → Notifications → On-Call Notifications → the Quiet rule → the device contact method → Critical Alerts toggle. On supported devices this makes the phone treat the push as a Critical Alert (bypasses silent mode and DND) while Rootly still treats the rule as Quiet for paging logic. The audible-rule constraints (step 1 requirements, phone call fallback) don’t apply.

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Test Your Notifications

The Test Notifications action sends test messages to the targets you’ve configured so you can validate delivery end-to-end. Testing is available for email, SMS, phone call, and device push — the same core methods used by notification rules. Test any time you change phones, update a phone number, reinstall the mobile app, or want to confirm your current configuration still works.

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Verification Requirements

Contact methods must be verified before they can be used for paging. Rootly enforces this so a rule that looks valid can’t quietly fail to deliver.

• Unverified phone numbers block SMS and call configurations.
• Unverified email addresses block email configurations.
• Shift Reminders follow the same rule — reminder delivery methods must be verified when the reminder is enabled.

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Shift Reminders

Shift Reminders notify you before your on-call shift starts and when it ends — separate from incident paging. Multiple delivery channels are supported and lead-time options range up to two weeks in advance when expanded options are enabled. For the full reference — supported channels, timing tiers, nested-schedule behavior, and reminder-specific troubleshooting — see Shift Reminders.

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Default Setup

If notification rules or reminders are missing, Rootly automatically creates a safe baseline so new responders aren’t left unpaged. Typically: a default quiet rule (commonly email), a default audible rule (email plus a high-reliability channel when available), and two shift reminders (one for shift start, one for shift end) delivered via email. These defaults are meant to be edited — they provide immediate coverage while a team finalizes their preferred setup.

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Best Practices

• Configure an audible step that reaches you when your phone is silenced. Then test it. This one step blocks the most common source of missed pages.
• Pair Critical Alerts with SMS or email. Redundancy on the first audible step is cheap insurance.
• Reserve Critical Alerts for audible rules. Using them on quiet rules by default trains you to ignore the DND bypass.
• Test after every phone change. New phone, updated phone number, or reinstalled app can affect push delivery — test to confirm.
• Verify contact methods before your first shift. Rootly enforces this on save, but the message reads as “why won’t this save?” if you don’t know why.

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Troubleshooting

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Related Pages