Notifications & Channels

Delivery is the product. This guide covers how pages reach people: push-first delivery, the per-user rules that decide what reaches which channel, channel verification, what SMS and voice cost, and exactly how quiet hours and mute behave.

1. Understand how delivery works

   OpsPing is push-first. When an alert fires, the escalation policy decides who to notify, and each person's notification rules decide where the page goes. Push notifications are free and unlimited on every plan — no per-alert charges, no monthly ceiling.

   Push is built to wake you up:

   • Per-severity sounds — P1 sounds different from P3, so you know whether to reach for the phone before you look at it.
   • iOS critical alerts — P1 push breaks through silent mode and Focus, with Apple's critical-alert entitlement. Wearing an Apple Watch? See why pages may ping your watch instead of ringing your phone.
   • Android DND bypass — high-priority alarms ring through Do Not Disturb.

   SMS and voice calls are the optional fallback layer for when push might not be enough — and email is for the things that can wait, like digests and assignment notices. SMS/voice delivery (via Twilio) is rolling out during the pilot, so it may not be enabled on your tenant yet.

2. Write notification rules

   Notification rules are per-user: each person decides which alerts reach which of their channels. On the admin page, select a user to view and edit their rules. Each rule has three parts:

   • Criteria — what the rule matches: priority (e.g. P1 only), a source, or an on-call gate (only when this user is on call for a given schedule). Team and time-window restrictions can narrow it further.
   • Channels & delay — where to send, and after how many minutes. A delay of 0 pages immediately; a delay lets a quick ack on push cancel the SMS that would have followed.
   • Repeat — optionally re-fire the rule until the alert is acknowledged, so a page that got slept through doesn't stay slept through.

   

   Tip

   The classic ladder: push at 0 minutes, SMS at 5, voice call at 10 — for P1s only. Lower priorities get push and email. You get woken for what matters, and the phone stays quiet for what doesn't.

3. Add and verify channels

   Channels are delivery targets attached to a user: email addresses, SMS numbers, voice numbers. Every channel must be verified before OpsPing sends anything to it — adding a channel sends a verification code to that address or number, and the channel goes live only after the code is confirmed. Rules that target an unverified channel are skipped, so a typo'd phone number fails safe instead of paging a stranger.

   

4. Know what SMS and voice cost

   Push is free, always. SMS and voice draw on your organization's flex spend: usage is billed at provider cost with no markup, against a monthly credit included with your plan — and capped by a hard monthly ceiling you set. When the credit is spent, SMS and voice stop and push keeps going. A bill can never surprise you.

   Note

   Full plan details and the flex-spend breakdown are on the Pricing page. The short version: even at $0 of flex credit remaining, paging never stops — that's the point of push-first.

5. Set quiet hours and know what mute really does

   Two personal controls shape delivery, and they behave differently:

   • Quiet hours suppress non-P1 notifications during a window you choose. P1 breaks quiet hours — that's the whole point. A P3 at 3 a.m. waits; a P1 at 3 a.m. rings.
   • Mute suppresses everything, P1 included, until the mute expires. It exists for genuine "I am unreachable" moments — on a plane, in surgery — not for a normal night's sleep. If you want sleep with a safety net, use quiet hours, not mute.
   Warning

   Muting yourself does not re-route the page. If you're muted and on call, the alert escalates only after the policy's delays elapse. Going dark for more than an hour? Request an override or out-of-office coverage instead — see Schedules & escalations.

6. Route alerts into Slack

   Slack is where your team already argues about the outage, so OpsPing delivers there too. Install the Slack app (OAuth or paste-in install), then write delivery rules that route matching alerts to a channel. Each alert lands as a Block Kit card with Ack, Snooze, and Resolve buttons — no context switch to the console for the routine moves.

   Buttons act as a linked user, not an anonymous bot. Each person runs /opsping link once to tie their Slack account to their OpsPing account, after which an ack from Slack is their ack — same audit trail, same escalation ladder.

   The slash commands cover the rest: /opsping status, /opsping oncall, and /opsping ack work in any channel. Incidents also get their own Slack channel — responder invites, resolve summaries, and archive policies included. Full setup and options are in the Slack guide; the marketing-level pitch is on the Slack ChatOps page.