# Critical alerts Source: https://www.pingtower.com/docs/ios/critical/ A 3 a.m. page you sleep through is not a page. An escalation is delivered with Apple's critical-alert entitlement, which sounds at full volume through Silent mode, Do Not Disturb and every Focus. ## Which pushes are critical The event decides, not the level. An `alert.opened` is an ordinary notification. An `alert.escalated`, meaning a rule's renotify fired or a ladder rung was reached without an ack, is delivered as a critical alert. So a rule with `renotify_minutes: 10` gives you a quiet notification first and, ten minutes later if nobody acked, one that breaks through. If you want the first page to be loud, give the rule an escalation rung with `after_minutes: 1`. ## Enabling it iOS asks for critical-alert permission separately from ordinary notifications, the first time the app registers for push. The device reports its own answer to the service, and the service sends the critical rendering only to devices that said yes; every other device gets the ordinary one. If you declined, turn it on under Settings → Pingtower → Notifications → Critical Alerts; the app re-registers on next launch. ## Who receives it Every device of every member of the tenant, unless the escalation rung names schedules or accounts, in which case only those people.
Only pingtower.com can send itThe entitlement belongs to the app’s bundle id, and Apple accepts a push for it only from pingtower.com’s key. A self-hosted box reaches your phone through the relay, which forwards the escalation event and nothing else.