🚀 Improved Escalation Policies for JSM On‑call teams

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Hi Atlassian Community! 👋

If you use Jira Service Management for on-call and escalation policies, we’ve got a quick update to share. This change improves how escalation policies determine who’s next or previous on-call responder when schedule overrides and forwarding rules are in play.

This has been a long‑standing ask on JAC and we want to start by saying thank you!

Thank you for:

• Your patience while we worked through this, and

• The creative workarounds and custom solutions you shared with the community to make things work for your use cases in the meantime.

What’s changed?

Previously, in escalation policies using the step “escalate to next/previous user in Rotation,” system resolved who was next/previous based only on the base schedule. That meant:

• Active overrides and forwarding rules weren’t fully reflected

In some cases, that could result in alerts being routed to someone different from what you’d expect based on your final on‑call setup.

We’ve updated our on‑call engine so that, in escalation policies using the step “escalate to next/previous user in Rotation,” responders are now resolved from the final, effective schedule. These escalation policy options now notify the right responders according to the final schedule.

This means you no longer need extra schedules or workaround rules just to make sure an escalation step reaches the right person when overrides/forwarding rules are in place.

In the example below, the escalation step is set to notify the next responder in rotation. Because the final schedule factors in overrides and any active forwarding, Riley becomes the next responder and is notified—rather than Jordan, who would have been next on the base schedule.

Thanks again for your patience and for continuing to partner with us!

Help us decide what to build next

As we plan the next set of improvements for Operations in Jira Service Management, we’d really value your input. In particular, we’d love to hear:

• What’s hardest about managing on‑call today with Jira Service Management?

• What advanced on‑call or operations capabilities are missing for your team?

• Where does our current behavior (scheduling, escalations, overrides, routing, integrations, etc.) still not match what you’d expect?

If you’re open to sharing more details about your needs and workflows, please submit them here:
👉 Share your feedback on Operations in Jira Service Management: Alert, On-call, Integrations

If you’d like to talk with the product team directly, you can book a quick call here: Appointment booking with JSM product team

Your feedback will directly inform how we prioritise and shape the roadmap for JSM’s alert on‑call and operations experience.