About Escalations

Escalations enable you to increase the importance of notifications by:

Delaying notifications based on values in Date/Time fields.
Sending an escalation notification if action has not occurred on an item within a specified time period.
Repeating a notification.

Termination rules determine when escalation stops or does not occur. For example, you can create a rule for "Item Is Assigned." If an item is assigned before the rest of the escalation criteria becomes true, the escalation is not set.

To ensure that escalations are only sent during working times, you can specify a calendar that defines your organization's hours of operations. For example, if your organization operates from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, escalations are only sent during these hours. For details on calendars, refer to Calendars.

Delaying Notifications

Delay parameters enable you to send a notification based on the value of a Date/Time field. Rules determine when the timer begins for delayed notifications, which are fired after the specified delay.

Unlike other types of escalations, delayed notifications are triggered by a specified time value rather than a change to an item.

For example, when you send items to a "Review" state and specify a deadline of two weeks to complete the review, you can send a notification after one week to remind reviewers of their pending deadline. In this case, the rule for the notification would be "Items Sent to Review State" and the delay parameters would be "Due Date Is Less Than 1 Week."

For details on using delayed notifications, refer to Creating Delayed Notifications.

Sending Escalation Notifications Based on Inaction

Escalations allow one notification to send another notification based on an elapsed amount of time. A Termination rule stops an escalation from occurring.

For example, an e-mail notification is sent to an employee when an item is submitted into the system. If the employee does not act on the item within three days, an escalation notification is sent to the employee's manager.

For details, refer to Creating Escalation Notifications.

Repeating Notifications

Notifications can be sent repeatedly until a condition is met. The notification continues to be sent until the selected Termination rule is true. For example, you can set up a standard notification that sends an e-mail reminder to users every two days after they become the owner of a primary item. A Termination rule can be specified that stops sending the notification after the owner transitions the item to a new state.

For details, refer to Creating Repeating Notifications.

Combining Escalation Parameters

You can combine escalation parameters as needed. For example:

You can send a notification to a service technician when an item has been assigned. You can repeat this notification day until the item is closed, and send an escalation notification to managers after three days.
You can delay a notification for three days after the When rule becomes true, and then repeat this notification every two days until an item is closed.

Note: When you combine escalations based on inaction and repeating notifications, an Escalation notification is sent when the Termination rule is not met and the specified time interval for escalation has elapsed. If the Termination rule is true, the notification is no longer sent. The repeating notification is not sent after escalation has occurred.