> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.orbit.devotel.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# On-call escalation stack: which guide to open first

> Route your on-call question across the three sibling guides — alerting setup, the escalation runbook, and the operator deep dive — with one worked rotation that threads all three.

# On-call escalation stack: which guide to open first

Devotel Orbit's on-call surface is three guides that each own one sub-task. None of them duplicates the others, but nothing helps until you open the right one. This page is the router: it picks the guide for the ask, then walks one rotation end-to-end across all three.

## Pick the right guide

| What you need to do                                                                                             | Open this guide                                         |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------- |
| Set up paging triggers — rotations, escalation policies, and the curl samples for each endpoint                 | [On-call alerting](/guides/oncall-alerting)             |
| Define who pages whom after a breach — step timeouts, channels, supervisor-ladder handoff, repeat rounds        | [Escalation runbook](/guides/oncall-escalation-runbook) |
| Operate the loop day-to-day — the dashboard hub, pager hand-off, drills, and the open → ack → resolve lifecycle | [On-call deep dive](/guides/oncall-deep-dive)           |

The supervisor-ladder handoff is in the runbook: a step whose `target` is a `users` list (named responders and supervisors) rather than a live rotation. Four-eye-style approvals are a different lane — see the [two-officer approvals guide](/guides/verify-approvals-two-officer) — but the "page the supervisor on shift" step belongs in your escalation policy, and the runbook is where that policy tuning lives.

## One rotation, three guides — the worked example

Walk one rotation from nothing to rehearsed, using each guide once:

1. **Configure the trigger.** In the [alerting guide](/guides/oncall-alerting) define the rotation (`anchor`, `cadence`, ordered `members`) and resolve it to confirm who holds the pager now and who is next. That is your trigger: an ordered roster the escalation policy can point at.
2. **Define the ladder.** In the [runbook](/guides/oncall-escalation-runbook) chain the steps: rotation target over `push`/`sms` on the early steps, a `users` fallback (your supervisor) over `voice` on the late step, explicit `escalate_after_seconds` windows, and a `repeat` count for the whole policy to loop. Preview the flattened timeline before an incident depends on it.
3. **Run a drill.** In the [deep dive](/guides/oncall-deep-dive) open the dashboard hub (**Voice → On-call & escalation**), open a test incident, and walk acknowledge, resolve, and the negative paths (`409 incident_transition_invalid` on an ack of a resolved incident) until the sequence runs clean.
4. **Close the loop.** Wire the same four endpoints (`resolve`, `escalation/plan`, `incident/tick`, `incident/transition`) into your scheduler against your own incident store — you own persistence on every on-call endpoint, and each page fans out through the [Messages API](/api-reference/endpoints/messaging).

When the drill sequence and the live scheduler agree, the rotation is live; revisit whichever guide owns the sub-task you are changing, not all three.

## When the runbook is the wrong page

If you are wiring a contact center for the first time — softphones, queues, agent login, the whole surface — the on-call runbook is not the answer. First-time contact-center setup follows the [voice go-live checklist](/guides/voice-ccaas-go-live-checklist), which sequences the wiring end-to-end; on-call escalation is a dispatch layer you attach after that surface is up. The reverse also holds: when a live incident needs a human paged, the checklist is the wrong page and this trio is the right one.

## See also

* [On-call alerting](/guides/oncall-alerting) — the endpoint-by-endpoint trigger setup
* [Escalation runbook](/guides/oncall-escalation-runbook) — ladder definition, timeouts, and channels
* [On-call deep dive](/guides/oncall-deep-dive) — operating the loop day-to-day
* [Two-officer approvals](/guides/verify-approvals-two-officer) — four-eye approvals outside the on-call path
* [Voice go-live checklist](/guides/voice-ccaas-go-live-checklist) — first-time contact-center wiring
* [Escalation model concept page](/concepts/oncall-escalation-model) — the design rationale
* [On-Call API reference](/api-reference/oncall) — endpoint, scope, and field reference