> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.cortex.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Reduce MTTA

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    "production-readiness": {
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    "incident-mgmt": {
      label: "Incident management",
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<RecipeBadges badges={["recipe", "incident-mgmt"]} />

Mean Time to Acknowledge (MTTA) measures how quickly teams acknowledge an incident after it is triggered.

Reducing MTTA depends on:

* Operational readiness: Ensuring the right people are reachable at all times.
* Response behavior: Tracking and improving how fast incidents are acknowledged once triggered.

A well-designed Scorecard shouldn't just track MTTA as a number; **it should validate the conditions that enable low MTTA**, such as on-call setup, contact methods, and escalation policy depth.

### Best practices

When creating a Scorecard aimed at reducing MTTA, follow these best practices:

* Group rules by functional area (e.g., Incident Response, Monitoring, Reliability) to simplify assessment.
* Keep evaluation windows aligned so that related signals trend together.
* Enable Cortex notifications for when overall Scorecard scores drop, prompting teams to review and act.

## Rules that focus on reducing MTTA

| Category | Purpose | Example CQL expression |
| - | - | - |
| On-call configuration | Ensure service has an active PagerDuty schedule | `oncall != null` |
| Contact reliability | Verify responders can be reached through multiple channels | `oncall.usersWithoutContactMethods(allowed=["EMAIL","PHONE","PUSH_NOTIFICATION","SMS"]) == 0` |
| Escalation depth | Require at least two escalation tiers | `oncall.numOfEscalations() >= 2` |
| Acknowledgment time | Track MTTA against defined thresholds | `jq(oncall.analysis(...), '.meanSecondsToFirstAck <= 300')` |
| Monitoring coverage | Ensure critical services have active alerting rules | `datadog.monitors().length > 0` |
| SLO tracking | Validate that a service has defined SLOs and error budgets | `slos().any((slo) => slo.name.matchesIn(".*Uptime.*"))` |
| Ownership coverage | Require that every service has a defined owning team | `ownership != null` |
| Communication channel is set | Require that every service has a defined communication channel | `slack != null and slack.numOfMembers() > 0` |
| Entity was verified in the last 90 days | Require entity information, including ownership, on-call, and Slack to be verified in the last 90 days | `verifications().lastVerifiedAt() != null and verifications().lastVerifiedAt().fromNow() > duration("P-90D")` |
| Entity does not have pending verifications | Ensure entity does not have any pending verifications | `verifications().verifications().any(verification => verification.status == "PENDING") == 0` |

## Examples from real Cortex users

The following anonymized examples come from real uses cases our customers are solving with Cortex.

### Event Readiness Scorecard

For companies that have a busy season (e.g., companies that are busier during Black Friday), they might create a [seasonal readiness Scorecard](/guides/production-readiness/seasonal-readiness-scorecard) in Cortex. The following strategy ties performance metrics directly to readiness controls:

* Track MTTA \< 120 seconds for P1 and P2 incidents
* Require two-tier escalation policies in PagerDuty:<br />
  `oncall.numOfEscalations() >= 2`
* Validate that on-call users have valid contact methods configured:<br />
  `oncall.usersWithoutContactMethods(...) == 0`
* Combine outcome metrics (MTTA) with configuration checks to ensure teams can meet targets consistently.

### On-call Configuration Scorecard

The following strategy ensures every service can be reached before an incident occurs, eliminating the common MTTA outliers caused by misconfigured alerts:

* Verify that on-call rotations exist<br />
  `oncall != null`
* Validate that on-call users have valid contact methods configured:<br />
  `oncall.usersWithoutContactMethods(...) == 0`
* Flag services without assigned responders

This CQL applies to all on-call integrations: [Opsgenie](/ingesting-data-into-cortex/integrations/opsgenie), [PagerDuty](/ingesting-data-into-cortex/integrations/pagerduty), [Splunk On-Call (formerly VictorOps)](/ingesting-data-into-cortex/integrations/splunk-oncall), and [xMatters](/ingesting-data-into-cortex/integrations/xmatters).

### Operational Maturity Scorecard

The previous examples applies to services and other entities. Some organizations prefer to track team-level operational maturity, including incident management as one area of assessment.

The following strategy aims for low MTTA as part of a broader operational maturity, not an isolated performance goal:

* Measure operational behaviors like post-incident reviews, ownership clarity, and alert hygiene.
* Focus on consistent response patterns rather than single-point metrics.


## Related topics

- [Scorecards](/guides/product-areas/scorecards.md)
- [Reduce MTTR](/guides/incident-mgmt/reduce-mttr.md)
- [Cortex beta program and release phases](/resources/beta.md)