Use emergency oversight

Temporarily add a second oversight recipient while investigating missing enquiries or uncertain mailbox access.

Written By Kelsey

Last updated About 1 month ago

Emergency oversight temporarily adds an extra recipient to eligible notifications. It is designed for active incidents, such as a client reporting missing enquiries or uncertainty about access to the normal mailbox.

It is manual, temporary, and separate from the normal fallback recipient.

What it does

While active, Always Alert adds the emergency recipient to eligible notifications using the configured fallback copy method. Duplicate prevention still applies.

The mode expires automatically after the configured number of hours.

It does not automatically detect inbox failure, reroute messages after a provider rejects them, or recover messages sent before the mode was enabled.

Before enabling it

Confirm that:

  • the emergency recipient is authorised to receive form content;

  • somebody is actively watching that inbox;

  • the duration is no longer than the investigation needs;

  • the additional transfer is consistent with the site’s privacy and contractual obligations;

  • the normal fallback recipient remains correct.

Enable emergency oversight

  1. Go to Always Alert → Monitoring.

  2. Enable Emergency oversight.

  3. Enter the emergency recipient.

  4. Choose a duration from 1 to 168 hours.

  5. Select Save Monitoring Settings.

  6. Submit each critical form and confirm all intended recipient paths.

The dashboard shows whether the mode is active and when it expires.

Investigate the underlying issue

Emergency oversight is a containment step, not the root-cause fix.

During the active window:

  1. Verify the form’s configured recipients.

  2. Review Always Alert’s activity log.

  3. Review the SMTP or transactional-provider event log.

  4. Check mailbox access, rules, spam, quarantine, bounces, and suppressions.

  5. Verify domain authentication and provider status.

  6. Correct the underlying form, mail, or mailbox issue.

End emergency oversight

Disable the mode as soon as normal service has been verified, or allow it to expire automatically.

Before closing the incident:

  • run final controlled submissions;

  • confirm normal, fallback, and any required client recipients;

  • disable the emergency copy;

  • document the cause, impact, and correction;

  • review whether the no-activity threshold or operating procedure should change.

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