Escalation PointsEscalation PointsWhen you define an escalation for a service level agreement (SLA), the system defaults the business object for the escalation to the one used in the SLA. Some examples of these business objects include SR (for service request), INCIDENT, PROBLEM, CHANGE, RELEASE, and WORKORDER. An escalation is comprised of one or more escalation points that represent a condition or threshold that the system monitors.
After you have defined commitments
for a service level agreement (SLA), you can click Define Escalation 
on each commitment row to create an escalation point for
each commitment. The system defaults values from the commitment row to
the escalation point to help define the conditions that will cause the
system to trigger an escalation. Each escalation point can be associated
with one or more actions and/or
notifications. Activating an escalation does not trigger an escalation
process. The system triggers an escalation only when the escalation engine
finds records that meet the criteria defined by the escalation points.
A common way to define an escalation point is
to measure for elapsed time against an attribute. For example, if you
want to measure elapsed time for a specific attribute of an object, you
can click Select Value 
in the Elapsed
Time Attribute field to choose a date- and/or time-related attribute
you want to measure. The system filters the objects in the Select Value
list to show only those associated with the object you select. You can
then schedule how often or when to check the object. For example, if the
SLA applies to Incident records, you can select TARGETSTART as the elapsed
time attribute with an associated value of -15.00 Minutes. If the condition
for the escalation point is met, the system triggers the associated action
or notification fifteen minutes prior to the target start time for the
incident record.
Typical escalation points include:
measuring elapsed time against an attribute (time period from now to an event in the past), such as how many hours an assignment has been untouched in a person's Inbox
measuring time until lapse (time period from now to an event in the future), such as how many days until a contract expires
a standalone condition without a time measurement, such as using the system to automatically accept or reject an assignment in a workflow process
If the SLA Hold feature is enabled for organizations, escalation point condition are created to ensure that a ticket that is in SLA Hold status is not escalated and that the accumulated hold time is added to the original target times when calculating when to escalate the ticket.
The default conditions are maintained in a class file, but can be replaced by an expression. You can change the default conditions after they have been created.
You can associate one or more actions to an escalation point, and you can associate one or more notifications to an escalation point. You must associate at least one action or notification to an escalation before you can activate the escalation. You are not required to have both an action and a notification.