Guides · Updated 24 Sep 2026
Escalation rules on monday.com: notify the next person up
Escalation means the right next person hears about a stuck item without anyone chasing it: first the owner, then a lead, then a manager. One notify automation is one step. An escalation path has several, each after a longer wait.
The short answer
In monday.com you can chain several automations, one per step. It works, and it is easy to lose track of which automation is which step, and hard to stop the later steps once the item moves on. An escalation ladder keeps the steps together and restarts them when the status changes.
What a good escalation path has
- Steps with growing delays: the owner after one day, the team lead after three.
- A message that says why the person is being told.
- A reset: when the item moves on, the ladder starts again for the new status.
- A record on the item, so anyone who opens it sees that it was escalated.
How Stale & SLA does it
In the board's Stale & SLA settings, the escalation ladder is a list of steps: after how many days, which people column to notify, and an optional message. It runs on the SLA clock of statuses that have a target, in working days when business hours are on, and restarts when the item changes status.
For automations, the app's action Escalate to people column with message notifies everyone in the chosen people column of the item and posts an update on the item with your message. The ready-made template When an item breaches its SLA, escalate it to a people column connects it to the SLA trigger.
Frequently asked
- Who can change the ladder?
- Board settings are admin-only. Members see the results on the board.
- Does a step fire twice?
- No. Each step fires once per stretch in a status, and the ladder starts again when the status changes.
Stale & SLA adds time in status, stale alerts, SLA targets and escalations to any monday.com board. Set-up takes about two minutes per board.