About Incident Escalation

Use incident escalations to notify designated people, based on criteria you define, when an incident reaches its follow-up date, warning date, or late date.  The follow-up, warning and late dates for an incident are determined by to the priority code that is assigned to each incident.

Automatic notification of incidents is handled through a "watchdog" utility that you can place on the background queue. This Escalation Utility monitors the system and automatically performs escalation actions.

Setup

Use these steps to set up incident escalation:

1. Define the weekly billing hours on the Contract tab of the Service Parameters form. These fields work in conjunction with the Coverage fields on the Service Priority Codes form.
2. Define a Supervisor on the Partners form. This field applies only if using the escalation task requires a supervisor.
3. Use the Incident Escalation Tasks form to set up escalation activities by priority code. (You define when, how, and to whom notifications will be sent. (The basis for the follow-up, late or warnings are defined on the Service Priority Codes form.) On the Incident Escalation Tasks form, you can set notification options such as these:

   Option	Description
   E-mail	Send an e-mail to the incident owner, supervisor, SSR, contact, etc.
   Status Change	Change the incident status code value.
   Priority Change	Change the incident priority code value.
   Text Message	Send a message to a text message service.
   Create Event	Create an event to record the escalation occurrence/
   Owner Change	Change the incident owner value.

4. On the Service Parameters form, assign a default priority code to use for all incidents. On the Service Customers, Units, or Service Contracts forms, assign priority code default values to specific customers, units or contracts, as needed. (A priority level default can also be set for items and service types, to simplify the setting up of units and contracts.)

Built-in Escalation (How Default Priority Codes Are Determined)

When you create an incident, the priority code assigned to the incident defaults from the values set at other levels, using this hierarchy:

1. If the unit on the incident is populated, and that unit is under an active contract, use the contract priority code, if not blank.
2. If the item and customer on the incident are populated and that item/customer combination is under an active contract, use the contract priority code, if not blank.
3. If the customer on the incident is populated and that customer has an active contract, use the contract priority code, if not blank.
4. If the unit on the incident is populated but not found on an active contract, use the unit's priority code, if not blank.
5. If the item on the incident is populated but not found on an active contract, use the item's priority code.
6. If the customer on the incident is populated but not found on an active contract, use the customer's priority code,if not blank.
7. If no other level in this hierarchy has a priority code defined, use the default priority code from the Service Parameters form.

When you save the incident record, the Escalation Tasks tab on the Incidents form displays the escalation tasks that are automatically associated with the incident. Escalation tasks which have rules which do not match that of the incident are displayed but marked as inactive.

You can change the escalation tasks or add new tasks that are created specifically for this incident.

Running the Escalation Utility

Run the Incident Escalation Utility, which determines what escalations should be performed. The utility can be run at set intervals on the background queue.

The utility performs these functions:

• Reviews all active escalation tasks for each open incident.
• Compares the current date to the date of the escalation basis.
• Determines the escalation frequency.
• Performs the escalation action.
• Creates an escalation log entry.
• Sets the Last Processed Date for each affected incident.

How an incident is escalated is determined by the priority of the incident, but what triggers the escalation can be based on criteria you set for Due Date, Follow-up, Late or Warning time lines. In addition, you can determine how often the escalation notification can occur - for example, once, hourly, or daily.

Viewing the Incident Escalation Logs

The Incident Escalation Logs form keeps track of the escalation tasks that were processed for each incident.

Related Topics

Setting Up Escalation Tasks

Setting Up Service Priority Codes