Escalations OverviewEscalations OverviewEscalations automatically monitor critical processes to help you meet the commitments in your service level agreements (SLAs). The primary goal of Escalation Management is to ensure that critical tasks are completed on time. You can use escalations to determine how incidents, problems, and service requests are handled, and work to ensure that you or your vendors remain compliant with any SLAs by solving problems in a timely manner.
When a Service Desk agent applies an SLA to a record, the system begins to poll for records that meet the criteria set by the associated escalation, according to the frequency in the escalation's Schedule field. If the system finds records that match, and any of those records meet the conditions defined by the escalation points, then the system triggers the appropriate actions and/or notifications.
When creating escalations in the Service Level Agreements (SP) application, consider the following points:
You can create SLAs at the site, organization, or system level. If you specify an organization or site, the SLA record's associated escalation is restricted to that site or organization. If you leave both the Organization and Site fields empty, the escalation is available to all sites and organizations (system-wide).
When you create a new SLA, the system sets the SLA status to DRAFT. When you create an escalation for an SLA that is in DRAFT status, the system sets the associated escalation to inactive.
Once you set an SLA to ACTIVE, the system automatically activates the associated escalation if it contains one escalation point and action or notification. If you create an escalation for an SLA that is in ACTIVE status, you must activate the escalation by using Escalation > Activate/Deactivate Escalation from the Select Action menu.
If you change the status of an SLA to INACTIVE, the system displays a message asking if you want to deactivate the escalation as well. If you select Yes, users cannot apply the deactivated SLA to any records, and the system does not run the associated escalation from that point forward or for any existing records that have that SLA applied to them. If you select No, users cannot apply the deactivated SLA to any new records but the associated escalation remains active and will continue to run for existing records that have the SLA applied to them.
You can build and validate escalation points incrementally while the escalation is inactive, and activate it after you have validated the escalation points.
When you delete an SLA, the system also deletes the associated escalation.
Note: For more detailed information about how escalations work, see the System Administrator Guide or the Escalations online help.