What are the best ways to ensure you wake up to important PagerDuty alerts?

Sometimes it's about reducing the noise overall. If you're getting too many alerts, figure out what's unnecessary and disable those pages. I went through a similar process at work, and we reduced our alerts significantly. Now, it’s more manageable and I only hear from PagerDuty when it’s really urgent.

Couldn't agree more about the ringtone situation! I recommend using a really loud and shocking sound for your critical alerts. Something like an air raid siren or a very intense song can trigger your 'fight or flight' response and get you up. The right tone can make a huge difference.

There are ways to make your alert system unique! Someone I know uses a metal tray with coins for their phone. When it vibrates, it rattles the coins, making a noise that can wake anyone up. It sounds strange but it works! You can also mix that with a traditional loud ringtone for good measure.

PagerDuty lets you customize your alerts, which can be really helpful. For example, I have it set up to notify me through a chat channel first, then send a text, and if I still don’t respond, it calls me. I make sure the number rings through Do Not Disturb mode, so I definitely hear it. One trick I use is to set up a focus mode on my phone to limit other distractions—so I don't ignore important alerts because of the noise from apps like Teams.

I recommend using a dedicated app like BuzzKill if you're on Android. It lets your alerts vibrate loudly and bypass DND settings. You can set it so that only certain important notifications will wake you up, which is a game-changer for heavy sleepers like us.