About Actions and NotificationsAbout Actions and NotificationsWhen you create response plan, you typically create actions and notifications that occur when the response plan is applied to a record. For example, you might create a response plan for password-related incidents for laptops at your central location. The actions on the response plan apply a ticket template that assigns ownership of the incident and apply, a service level agreement that commits to response and resolution times. Notification is sent to indicate receipt of the incident and inform the recipient of an estimated resolution time.
When you add an action, action group, or notification, you create a record in the Escalations (SP) application. For more information about escalations, see the Escalations (SP) help.
An action is a planned event or activity. An action group is a set of actions in a sequence. You can add a preexisting action or action group to a response plan. You also can create an action or action group in the Actions application and add it to the response plan.
Action groups
All actions belong to an action group. The action groups, not actions, are associated with records. If you create a new action and add it to a response plan, an action group is created for it and the identifier is added to the Action Group field. Additional actions you insert are added to this group.
You also can select an existing action group and add it to the response plan. Its identifier is inserted in the Action Group field.
Inserting a new action to the action group
If your response actions include an action group from the Actions application, and you add an action to the Actions table, the system checks to see if the action group is used on other records. If it is not, the new action is added to the action group. If it is in use, a new action group is created, made up of the actions from the existing group and the new action. A new identifier for the action group is inserted in the Action Group field.
Deleting an action from the action group
If you delete actions from the Actions table, the system checks to see if other records use the action group. If none use the action group, the action is deleted from the action group. If other records use the action group, a new action group is created, made up of the remaining actions from the existing group. A new identifier for the action group is inserted in the Action Group field.
Adding or modifying the action group
If you select or add an action group with multiple actions, all the actions are added to the response plan. If you modify the response plan to select a different group, the existing actions are removed and replaced with actions from the new group.
A notification is an e-mail message that is sent to a recipient or a role. You can create two types of notifications: template-based notifications or free-form notifications. Create a template-based notification by selecting an existing template for the Template field. Create a free-form notifications if you define only a role or recipient, subject, and message. When you save the notification, a free-form communication template is created and the identifier is added to the Template field.
See the topic About Communication Templates for more information about using these templates.
Note: For more information about actions and notifications, see the Actions help and the Communication Templates help.