The Escalation Group Slot Rule
An Escalation Group never consumes a Watcher slot. This is a hard billing rule, not a default that can drift.
A Watcher Slot is defined as: 1 Watcher Slot = 1 active Watcher × 1 deployed customer-facing Community. An Escalation Group is internal operational infrastructure, not a customer-facing Community deployment — connecting or deploying into one never consumes a slot and never counts toward your plan's Community allowance.
Worked examples:
Watcher A deployed to Community 1 = 1 slot.
Watcher A deployed to Community 1 and Community 2 = 2 slots.
Watcher A and Watcher B both deployed to Community 1 = 2 slots.
Watcher A deployed to Community 1, plus the same Watcher deployed into a private Escalation Group = still 1 slot.
Three Watchers (A, B, C) across two Communities — A and B in Community 1, C in Community 2 — all also connected to one shared Escalation Group = 3 slots, not 6. The Escalation Group adds zero.
This is a firm rule, enforced the same way whether you have one Escalation Group or none: it's counted only as a customer-facing Community when it's actually one, and it never is.