# Escalation policies

Source: https://instatus.com/help/incident-response/escalation-policies

Escalation policies make sure an incident never goes unhandled. If the first responder doesn't acknowledge an incident in time, the policy escalates it to the next person or team.

![Add a new escalation policy](https://instatus.com/help/incidents/add-escalation.png)

## Add a policy

Go to **On-call**, find the escalation policies section, and click **Add policy**. Then give your policy a name and build its escalation rules.

Each rule says who to notify and when:

- **When**: how many minutes after the incident is created the rule fires. Rules must be ordered by time, earliest to latest.
- **Who**: a specific member, a group, the current on-call user in a schedule, the next on-call user, or all members of an on-call schedule.

Rules after the first one fire only **if the incident still isn't acknowledged**, so each step escalates further.

## Repeat the escalation

You can repeat the whole escalation if nobody acknowledges the incident:

- Choose how many times to repeat, and how many minutes to wait between repeats.
- Optionally revert the acknowledgement state back on each repeat, so a new acknowledgement is required every round.
- Optionally auto-resolve the incident once all repeats are completed.

## Link it to a routing rule

An escalation policy won't be triggered until it's linked to a [routing rule](https://instatus.com/help/incident-response/routing-rules). Create a routing rule that targets your policy so triggered incidents actually reach it.

Your escalation policy is ready 🚨

- [Routing rules](https://instatus.com/help/incident-response/routing-rules): Route incidents to the right schedules and policies.