What are routing rules?

You can route alerts based on their source, content, and time. Team routing rules provide the flexibility to notify a team using different escalation rules, or on-call schedules, for different alerts, at different times. You can specify “No One” (an easier way of turning off alerts), a team escalation, or a team schedule and customize multiple routing rules, each with its unique conditions and time intervals. When routing to a schedule, it will notify only the individuals who are on-call in that schedule when the alert is created.

Escalations follow the escalation policy and notify whoever is first in the flow (on-call members, teams, etc.). After the designated time, it notifies the next, and so on, until the policy stops. You can configure routing rules based on alert properties and apply them at specific time intervals. Regardless of the option selected, the alerts are still visible to all the team members.

When an alert is created for a team or when the alert is assigned to a team, Jira Service Management evaluates the team's routing rules and finds the appropriate schedule, escalation, or notification. It then applies the first matching routing rule to notify the team. In other words, only one routing rule is applied for an alert. Routing rules are evaluated in exactly the same order (top-down) in which they are shown on the UI. A team can have up to 100 routing rules.

How do routing rules work?

If you route alerts to a schedule, the members in the on-call schedule when the alert was created are notified, but no escalation takes place if the alert goes unacknowledged.  If you route alerts to no one, the alert is recorded but teams aren't notified. A good example of a situation in which you would route to no one, is if the priority of the alert is low, but you still want a record. For example, a routing rule can be set up to route alerts of lower priority (P4 or P5) to no one.