Setting up an Escalation Rule

This section covers the following steps to create an escalation:

• Step 1: Basic Escalation Options—Name the escalation rule and specify if it should be turned on.
• Step 2: Escalation Type—Define the type of escalation.
• Step 3: Additional Criteria—Select criteria used to escalate Issues.
• Step 4: Escalation Action(s)—Select one or more actions to occur when an Issue meets the escalation criteria.
• Step 5: When to Run Escalation—Choose when an Issue should be checked to see if it meets the escalation criteria.
• Step 6: Create New Escalation—Save the escalation information.

Note

Master Issues cannot be closed by an escalation rule.

Step 1: Basic Escalation Options

• Escalation Name—Give a name to the escalation rule, for example, Gold Level Issues.
• Escalation On/Off—To activate this escalation rule, the On radio button must be selected (the default).  If an escalation rule is turned off, the settings are saved until the rule is re-activated or deleted.

Step 2: Escalation Type

There are two kinds of escalation rules: instant and time-based.  Instant escalation rules are run at the time an Issue is created,edited, or both.  Time-based escalations are only applied after an Issue has remained open or unedited for a specified amount of time.  Depending on which option is chosen, a number of sub-options are available.

• Instant Escalation—If you select this option, one of the following additional options can be selected. Note that, when an escalation is based on a status change, if there is a status change for a Global Issue and it changes all of the linked Issues, this is problematic when the escalation is instant.  Therefore, that type of escalation must be time-based not instant:
• Instantly escalate Issue after it has been created and/or edited—Choose one or both of the following:
1. Instant Escalation upon creation of Issue
2. Instant Escalation upon editing of Issue  
• Instantly escalate Issue received as a copy:
1. From Project—Specify the project from which the Issue is being received to trigger the escalation.

• Time-Based Escalation—If you select this option, the following additional options become available (only one can be selected):
1. Time unedited/Age—Select the amount of time that must pass since the Issue was created (Age) or since anyone edited it (Time unedited) before it is escalated.  Minute, hour, day, and week increments are available.  Combinations of hours, minutes, days, and weeks can be selected.  The time is based on a 24/7 schedule.

Note

The "Age" option is not available in the FootPrints database versions.

2. Time unedited/Age based on “Work Time”—This option also counts the time since an Issue was created or last edited, but uses the project Work Calendar rather than the standard 24/7 schedule.  Regular working days and hours, as well as holidays, can be configured for the organization by clicking the link for Work time or by selecting Work Calendar from the Project Administration page. When using the Work Calendar, only one unit of time can be chosen (minutes, hours, or days).  Complete instructions for the Work Calendar can be found earlier in this chapter.

• Re-escalate Issue—This option applies to both types of escalations. When selected, the system will apply or re-apply the escalation rule to an already escalated Issue. Recurring age-based escalations are also allowed; each escalation will only run once when the Issue sufficiently ages. So, for example, you can create separate age-based recurring escalation rules for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, and 1 week, and each escalation rule will only be applied once to an Issue when it is sufficiently aged for that rule.  

Example:

• The support hours are Monday-Friday from 8am to 6pm (as configured in the project Work Calendar).
• An escalation rule states that an Issue must be unedited for 6 hours before it is escalated.
• A new Issue comes in at 4pm on Friday.

In the above case, the Issue will be escalated at 12pm on Monday (6 working hours later).

Step 3: Additional Criteria

The criteria chosen here determine which Issues are automatically escalated.  Available criteria include virtually all options that appears on the Advanced Search page, including Status, Priority, Assignee, Project fields, Address Book fields, etc. (see the section on Advanced Search for more information).

NOTE

If your rule requires that Create/edit must be by an agent, but a Customer Request status (such as Request) is used as a criterion for escalating an Issue, then it becomes possible for Customer Requests to be escalated (i.e., an escalation created by a Customer).

Select the criteria for this escalation rule

Step 4: Escalation Actions

1. Notification

1. Email—One or more email actions can be selected.

• Send a summary mail—When the escalation routine is run and matches are found, an email is sent to the specified addresses.  The email contains a summary of escalated Issues for the Project.  If you enter multiple email addresses, separate the addresses with a space.  Summary mails are not coded to use uploaded custom formatted files.  To use an uploaded mail template, edit the escalation to modify Email Notification from "Send a summary mail to ...." to "Send Single Issue notification mail to ..."
• Send mail to Assignees—When an Issues is escalated, an email is sent to all Assignees of each escalated Issue.  Select the email address type to use for this escalation rule:
• Agent—the Agent's agent email address.
• Pager—the Agent's  pager email address.
• Wireless—the Agent's wireless email address.

Note

The different email address types are defined for each user on the Edit Agent Administration page, or on the My Preferences page by the Agent.

• Send mail to the Supervisor of each Assignee—An email is sent to the Assignees' Supervisor(s).  Refer to Add Agents or Edit Agent User for information on designating Supervisors.
• Send mail to the Team Leader of each Team—An email is sent to each Team's Team Leader.  Refer to Creating Teams for information on designating Team Leaders.
• Send mail to Contact—An email is sent to the Customer contact for the escalated Issue.
• Send mail to the last agent to edit (or submitter if none) if last edit was by an agent—An email is sent to either the last agent to edit the Issue or, if no editing has been done on the Issue, send mail to the person who submitted the Issue.
• Send single-Issue notification mail to the following space-separated email addresses—Send an email to the specified email addresses only once for this escalation.
• Email Template—Select or define an email template to be used for this escalation.  If you elect to configure an email template, you can refer to Escalation Email for further instructions.

2. Broadcast Message—One or more broadcast message types can be selected.
3. Display pop-up notification to the following users—Specify a user or users to receive a broadcast message from FootPrints.
4. Display pop-up notification to the Assignees—Agents assigned to the escalated Issues receive a broadcast message from FootPrints.

2. Workflow—One or more workflow actions can be selected.

1. Priority—Automatically raises or lowers the Issue’s priority as specified.  You can also change the priority of all escalated Issues to a specific priority.
2. Status—Automatically change the status of the escalated Issue.
3. Project/Address Book Fields—Automatically change specified Project/Address Book fields.  If you check this box, you must click the Click here to configure field edits link to specify the changes.
4. Click here to configure field edits—This page allows you to update Project and Address Book fields via an escalation. In addition to editing other fields, you can change the Title field or append a description to the Description field.  Fill in the fields with the appropriate data and then click the "GO" button.

• Add field variables on left to target fields on right—This feature allows you to populate a field with the value from another field upon escalation. Select a field from the left drop-down and then select a field from the right drop-down. When an Issue is escalated, the field in the right drop-down is populated with the value of the field in the left drop-down.
• Address Book Fields—Specify the changes to be made to Address Book fields upon escalation, i.e., select the data that is to populate the field after the escalation.  If you do not change a field, it is unchanged after the escalation.
• Project Fields—Specify the changes to be made to Project fields upon escalation, i.e., select the data that is to populate the field after the escalation.  If you do not change a field, it is unchanged after the escalation.

Note

If you notice that dependent fields are being displayed with a null value when an escalated Issue is edited, it may be that the dependent field was configured with an incorrect value in the escalation rule.  If you configure a dependent field to be changed to an invalid choice as a result of an escalation, the dependent field is populated with null data.  For example, if the first field were set to Software and the dependent field were changed to Printer when escalated, and Printer is not a valid choice for the Software dependent drop-down, when the Issue is edited, the dependent field will show no selection.  The drop-down for the dependent field will contain the normal, valid choices, so it can be corrected at that time.  To correct the problem at its source, edit the escalation rule and replace the incorrect choice with the correct choice.

4. Assignment—Highlighted users are assigned to the escalated Issue.  If Add Selected Users is chosen, the original assignees of the Issue remain assigned.  If  Re-Assign is chosen, the original assignees are unassigned.  Teams and/or individual users can be selected.  Re-assignment can also automatically be made to Team Leaders or Assignees' Supervisor(s) by checking the appropriate box.
5. Sub-tasks for this Issue—Automatically creates sub-tasks for the Issue using the Master Quick Issue template that you select from the drop-down list.

Note

Sub-tasks are not created for an escalated Issue if the Issue is itself a sub-task, a GlobalLink, a Global Issue, or a Solution.

6. Cross-project—The Issue is automatically copied or moved to the Project specified. If Copy with a Dynamic Link is selected, the Issues update each other when field data changes.  If Include Related Subtasks is checked, then when a Master Issue is copied or moved across Projects, the related subtasks are also copied or moved.

NOTE

Subtasks are not accepted by the receiving  Project unless the receiving Project is configured for Cross-project copy/move of subtasks.  Refer to the topic for Issue Workflow for more information on setting this option.

7. Color—The Issue is displayed on the FootPrints Homepage with the specified color.
8. External Action—An external application can be run by the rule.  This feature is especially useful for running scripts.  The application must be one that can run and stop on its own without any user intervention.  In addition, if the program involves running a graphical user interface (GUI), it may not be able to display the interface to a screen, which could cause the application to hang and fail.  Therefore, the application should also be one that can run from a command line rather than a GUI.  Enter the full path to the program, e.g., D:\Programs\AppLite\applite.exe. Some field data from the escalated Issue can also be passed to the program as arguments:
9. Issue Number—%%MRID%%
10. Title—%%Title%%
11. Priority—%%Priority%%
12. Status—%%Status%%
13. Submitter—%%SUBMITTER%%
14. Project ID—%%PROJID%%
15. Project and Address Book fields—%%FIELD NAME%% where "FIELD NAME" is the name of the field in upper case.

External actions run applications from the CGI directory.  Make sure that directory has permission to run the application or the external action will fail.

i. Surveys—If checked, a customer satisfaction survey is sent to the contact when the escalation occurs.

3. When to Run Escalation

1. Any Time—Escalate the Issue at the moment the Issue is found to match escalation criteria.
2. Follow-the-Sun—Run at the time and on the days specified.  You can also specify multiple times.

Unassigning One Agent While Keeping the Rest Assigned

The administrator may need to build an escalation in which one agent, who is always the same agent, is removed from the assignments list while others, who vary from Issue to Issue, remain assigned to the Issue.  In this instance, it would not be possible to use the standard escalations page to unassign everyone and then re-assign the Issue because the agents who are to remain would vary from Issue to Issue.  An example where this might be needed is in the case of an Issue requiring an approval.  The approver might be the same agent every time, but the other assignees could vary.  This re-assignment can be accomplished via an escalation, but not by using the Assigment section of Step 4: Escalation Actions.  Instead, you would use the External Action function to run a command from FootPrints' API.  To do so, specify the following as an external action:

C:\footprints\bin\perl\bin\perl C:\footprints\bin\mrUnassign.pl %%MRID%% userID

Step 5: When to Run Escalation

Choose when to check an Issue against escalation criteria. There are two options:

• Anytime—The escalation can be run at any time (the default).
• Follow the Sun—"Follow the Sun" escalations allows you to assign or reassign Issues to Agents in different locations and time zones depending on the time of day or day of the week that the Issue is created or escalated.  The time and day specified here are based on the FootPrints server time.  This integrates the escalation time on the server with when the escalation rule is to be applied.  Some examples are:
• Escalate Issues received off hours to someone's pager (time intervals when support team is not available).
• Escalate Issues and route them based on the time of day, e.g., Issues submitted 9am-5pm EST are routed to the East Coast US Help Desk; those submitted 5pm-1am EST are routed to the Tokyo Help Desk; those received 1am-9am EST are routed to the London Help Desk.

To set Follow the Sun criteria:

1. Select Follow the Sun.
2. Select the time range for the escalation rule.
3. If this escalation should run during a span of time that includes a change of date, you must specify the time spanned during both dates in order to cover the entire period.  For example, the four hours between 8:00pm and 2:00am can be covered by selecting 8:00pm-11:59pm above and, additionally, Midnight-2:00am in the second set of time criteria.
4. Check the boxes corresponding to the days of the week that the escalation is required to run.

Step 6: Create New Escalation

After criteria and actions are chosen, enter your password and click GO; the escalation rule is enabled.  When an Issue matches the criteria of the rule, the specified actions occur.  If an escalation rule fails for any reason, the Project Administrator receives an email notification.

Note

Escalated Issues lose their urgent status once they are edited.  If an Issue is reported as escalated, it is not escalated again until it has lost its urgency (by being edited) and then becomes urgent again. The exception to this is if Re-escalate Issue is selected under the Time criteria.

Scheduler Service

Escalations are run by the FootPrints Scheduler service. On Windows, FPSchedule.exe is automatically set as a service on the FootPrints server.  On UNIX, a cron job is automatically created that runs the MRrunScheduledScripts.pl file. This service handles incoming email, outgoing email notification, escalations, mass emails, and scheduled reports.