Glossary · Platform
Two-way escalation
Two-way escalation is an alerting pattern in which every notification expects a reply: the recipient acknowledges or declines, and the absence of an acknowledgement within a set window automatically escalates the alert to the next responder — repeating until a human takes it.
In practice
Silence is treated as failure
An alert fires and my-iris texts the first on-call responder: reply 1 to acknowledge, 2 to escalate. If they acknowledge, the alert resolves and the loop ends. If the phone is on silent, out of coverage, or the person is off-shift, no reply arrives — so my-iris does not assume success. It escalates: a voice call, then the next responder, then a supervisor, up to ~20 rounds, until a human takes it. Because the acknowledgement is captured against the specific alert, you get more than “probably delivered” — you get proof that a named person had it, and when.
How a reply is handled
What “two-way” means at the keypad
“1” acknowledges and resolves the alert; “2” escalates immediately to the next responder.
The call prompts for a keypress (DTMF); the digit is captured and timestamped exactly like an SMS reply.
A carrier “delivered” receipt never stops escalation — only an explicit human response does.
Two-way escalation — frequently asked
How is two-way escalation different from one-way alerting?
One-way alerting sends a message and assumes it landed; a delivery receipt only proves the network accepted it, not that a human read or acted on it. Two-way escalation requires an explicit acknowledgement — a reply or a keypress — and treats silence as failure, escalating to the next person. The alert only resolves when a human actually takes it.
What counts as an acknowledgement?
An explicit response from the recipient: replying “1” to an SMS to acknowledge (or “2” to escalate), or pressing a key on an IVR voice call. my-iris distinguishes “delivered” from “acknowledged” and only the latter stops the escalation and resolves the alert.
What happens if no one ever acknowledges?
my-iris escalates through your configured chain for up to ~20 rounds — across SMS and voice, to successive responders and supervisors. Every attempt is logged, so even an unacknowledged alert leaves a complete, timestamped record of who was tried and when.
See the state machine that drives two-way escalation across SMS and voice.
How escalation worksEscalate until someone acts
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