When your company has multiple offices or operational sites – whether that’s across the U.S. or around the world – getting alerts to the right team isn’t as easy as just checking who’s on duty. Events can come from a wide range of sources tied to different physical locations, time zones, or even separate departments, and not every alert is meant for every team.
Let’s say your company has operations in New York, Dallas, and San Francisco. When an alert from the New York data center is triggered at 3 AM Eastern, it shouldn’t wake up the team in California. But without intelligent routing, that’s exactly what happens: alerts get broadcast to every on-duty engineer, regardless of geography or responsibility.
SIGNL4 makes this easy with Distribution Rules – a flexible way to route alerts based on the details inside each event, like a SITE field. This ensures alerts go straight to the team responsible for that location, so nothing ends up in the wrong hands or wakes up the wrong region.
Why It Matters
Smart alert routing isn’t just a convenience – it’s essential for scale, accountability, and maintaining focus across teams. Without it:
- The wrong teams get alerted at the wrong times
- Global coverage becomes chaotic
- Response times increase because alerts need manual re-routing
- You risk alert fatigue – or worse, ignored events
With SIGNL4, you can build intelligent, event-driven rules that route alerts based on the metadata inside each event – such as a SITE or Region field. As alerts come in from various monitoring tools or systems across your organization, SIGNL4 evaluates that data and makes real-time decisions about where the alert should go.
Each alert is delivered to the correct regional team, using that team’s own on-call schedule, notification settings, and escalation paths. So an event tagged with “Chicago” routes to the Midwest team, while one from “San Diego” goes to the West Coast – automatically. This removes the need for manual sorting, prevents cross-regional noise, and ensures every alert is handled by the team responsible for that location.
You get precision routing, regional coverage, and global operations without the noise.
Step-by-Step Solution: Use Distribution Rules to Route by Location
1. Define the Trigger Parameter (e.g., SITE)
Start by identifying which field in your event payload indicates the source location. This is the key to routing alerts by region. Depending on your system, the field might look like one of the following:
- “Location”: “Dallas”
- “Region”: “West”
- “BuildingID”: “SF-HQ-03”
SIGNL4 reads these values and uses them to match incoming alerts to the right team through Distribution Rules.
2. Create a Distribution Rule Based on That Parameter
Start by identifying which field in your event payload indicates the source location. This is the key to routing alerts by region. Depending on your system, the field might look like one of the following:
- Navigate to Integrations > Distribution Rules
- Edit an existing rule or create a new one
- Set the filter condition: SITE equals NY, then forward to East Coast Team
You can create rules for each site, region, or even building – each mapped to a specific team.
This is where the routing magic happens. The event isn’t just “broadcasted” – it’s delivered directly to the appropriate team’s queue, respecting their duty schedules and notification preferences.
3. Target the Right Team’s Duty Schedule
Each distribution rule targets a specific SIGNL4 team – and each team has its own:
- Members
- Duty calendar
- Escalation policy
- Notification preferences
So when a site-specific alert comes in, it routes to that team – and only that team. The alert uses their shift configuration, ensuring no one outside that group is disturbed.
For example:
- SITE = NYC → Routes to East Coast Team (on-duty from 8 PM to 8 AM EST)
- SITE = SF → Routes to West Coast Team (on-duty from 8 PM to 8 AM PST)
A payload such the one shown below will be received from the Regional Webhook and be routed to the East Coast team per the filter in the distribution rule we set above.
This setup ensures that time-sensitive incidents are handled locally, and you’re not waking up the wrong side of the country.
What to Do Next
- Set up a Distribution Rule for one of your regional sites
- Test by sending a sample event with a SITE field and verify it routes correctly
- Review how it looks in the mobile app, with category colors and duty-based delivery
- Learn more about Distribution Rules on YouTube: Distribution Rules
