---
title: Route alert episodes by severity in the experimental alerting system
description: How to route alert episodes to different workflows based on severity level in the experimental alerting system.
url: https://www.elastic.co/elastic/docs-builder/docs/4118/explore-analyze/alerting/experimental-alerting-system/action-policies/route-by-severity
products:
  - Kibana
applies_to:
  - Elastic Cloud Serverless: Experimental
  - Elastic Stack: Experimental since 9.5
---

# Route alert episodes by severity in the experimental alerting system
Use this page to send critical and non-critical alert episodes to different workflows by scoping one action policy per severity.
For example, you might page an on-call team for critical alert episodes while sending lower-severity alert episodes to a Slack channel for async review.

| Field                | Action Policy A        | Action Policy B                                             |
|----------------------|------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------|
| **Match conditions** | `severity: "critical"` | `severity: "low" OR severity: "medium" OR severity: "high"` |
| **Notify per**       | Episode                | Episode                                                     |
| **Frequency**        | On status change       | On status change                                            |
| **Destinations**     | PagerDuty workflow     | Slack workflow                                              |

Each action policy evaluates alert episodes independently.
- An alert episode with `severity: "critical"` matches Action Policy A but not Action Policy B.
- An alert episode with `severity: "high"` matches Action Policy B but not Action Policy A.
- If an alert episode's severity changes mid-lifecycle, the action policies that match it change accordingly. For example, if an alert episode escalates from `high` to `critical`, Action Policy A starts matching and Action Policy B stops matching. Action Policy A fires because it has no prior notification record for that alert episode.


## Related pages

- [Manage severity escalation notifications](https://www.elastic.co/elastic/docs-builder/docs/4118/explore-analyze/alerting/experimental-alerting-system/action-policies/severity-escalation): Understand what happens when an alert episode that has already matched an action policy changes severity.
- [Action policy reference](https://www.elastic.co/elastic/docs-builder/docs/4118/explore-analyze/alerting/experimental-alerting-system/action-policies/action-policy-reference): Look up match condition fields, grouping modes, and frequency options.
- [Create and configure an action policy](https://www.elastic.co/elastic/docs-builder/docs/4118/explore-analyze/alerting/experimental-alerting-system/action-policies/create-configure-action-policy): Set up an action policy with match conditions.