# What is Mean Time to Acknowledge (MTTA)?

> The average time between an alert or ticket and someone taking ownership.

Canonical: https://www.decimal.app/glossary/mtta · Last reviewed: 2026-09-23

MTTA measures how long it takes for an alert, incident, or escalated ticket to be acknowledged by the responsible person.

## Why it matters

Long acknowledge times mean issues sit unowned. For escalations, MTTA is often the largest part of the delay a customer feels.

## Best practices

1. Route to a person, not a channel. Channels let everyone assume someone else has it.
2. Alert on breaches. Escalate unacknowledged items automatically.
3. Report alongside MTTR. Separate waiting time from working time.

## How Decimal helps

Decimal starts investigating the moment a ticket lands, so the wait before anyone looks at it drops to zero.

## Related terms

- [Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR)](https://www.decimal.app/glossary/mttr): The average time from when an issue is reported to when it's fixed.
- [On-Call](https://www.decimal.app/glossary/on-call): The rotation of engineers responsible for responding to urgent issues.
- [Incident](https://www.decimal.app/glossary/incident): An unplanned disruption or degradation of a service that needs an urgent response.

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