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Acknowledging alerts

Acknowledging an alarm says "I've got this". It stops any further texts and calls for that alarm and tells the other people on the schedule who is handling it. It does not clear the alert: the alert stays active until the reading returns to normal.

Acknowledging matters most for alerts set to Text one person at a time until someone acknowledges, and for voice calls, where the next person is contacted if nobody acknowledges in time. For alerts that text everyone at once, nobody has to acknowledge, but you still can, and everyone else will be told.

Ways to acknowledge

A one-at-a-time alert text ends with a line like:

Reply ACK 4821 to acknowledge.

Reply ACK 4821 (the code is different for every alarm). Whisker.io replies to confirm: "Whisker.io: alert name acknowledged. Thank you, your first name."

  • Upper or lower case both work, and ACKNOWLEDGE 4821 works too.
  • If you have only one open alarm, a plain ACK, OK, YES, Y or 1 is enough.
  • If you have more than one open alarm and reply without a code, Whisker.io texts back the codes for each one so you can pick.
  • If the alarm was already acknowledged by someone else, you're told so.

A Whisker.io call reads out the alert and ends with "Press 1 to acknowledge this alarm. Press 2 to repeat." Press 1. You hear "Acknowledged. Thank you. Goodbye."

If you don't press anything you get one more chance; after that the call ends and the next person is tried.

  1. Go to Alerts (or a location's Alerts tab). Alarms that can be acknowledged show Firing or Unacknowledged in the Status column.
  2. Click Ack on the row. Or click the status to see everything sent so far, then click Acknowledge in that window.

You'll see "Acknowledged. The other people on the schedule will be told." Any user on the account can acknowledge, whether or not they are on the schedule; the portal records who did.

The mobile app cannot acknowledge alarms. Tapping the link in an alert text opens the alert in the app so you can see it, but to acknowledge you need to reply to the text, press 1 on the call, or use the web portal. See Alerts in the mobile app.

What happens after you acknowledge

  • No more texts or calls are sent for this alarm, to anyone.
  • Everyone else on the schedule who gets texts or email is sent: "Alert name at location: acknowledged by name at time. No further notifications for this alarm."
  • The Status column shows Acknowledged, by whom, and when.
  • When the reading returns to normal, everyone on call still gets the "cleared" message.

Only the first acknowledgement counts. If two people reply at once, the second is told it was already acknowledged.

Note

An acknowledgement belongs to one alarm. If the alert clears and fires again later, that is a new alarm with a new code, and the sequence starts again.

Warning

If a stacked escalation alert is watching the same channel (see Escalation), acknowledging the first alert does not stop the second one from firing if the problem is still there when its delay runs out.

Seeing what was sent

Click an alarm's status on the Alerts tab to see its timeline: every text, email and call, who it went to, and the result (for example Delivered, No answer, Acknowledged). The window also shows which schedule group was used and, for one-at-a-time alerts, which lap it is on. For the full record across all alarms, see Alert History.