Escalations

An escalation is a point in time by when a certain action associated with a process must be taken, otherwise the system escalates it. Escalation is one of the key actions defined when a potential breach of a Response Level agreement is identified. Within the Response Level agreement, the notification and escalation paths are outlined for specific services.

To be effective, actions rely on notifications. If a service nears a breach of the Response Level agreement, then the threshold is highlighted and the action is initiated. If, however, no one is notified of the action, then it is likely that nothing will be done to manage the potential breach. If there is no defined response within a defined time scale, the notification and the subsequent action should also trigger the escalation process.

When a user has completed the action specified in the process, escalations are said to be completed.

When you create an escalation you can define the following:

• The time that the escalation will breach.
• A message to send if the escalation is breached (optional).
• The new priority for the process if the escalation is breached.
• The new color if the escalation is breached.
• To whom you want to reassign the process if the escalation is breached.

An escalation can be associated with defined statuses within a process, therefore, you can add escalations only to items that are used within a defined process.

Escalations are usually used to ensure that certain actions are taken. These might include sending engineers out on site, telephoning the customer, or ordering replacement equipment. Escalations are also useful for warning of an impending breach of Response Levels.

Each time the Background Service runs, a maximum of 1000 escalations are processed. For information about configuring this service, see the Setup Guide.

Processes can each have their own escalations. In addition, Assignments, Tasks and Task Assignments that are linked to those Processes can have their own escalations. If the escalations of the Assignments, Tasks or Task Assignments breach later than those of the Processes, then an escalation conflict is indicated with the following icon: .