Escalation Rules

Escalation Rules support time-based events and actions, such as email or text notifications. There are five Escalation Events available:

• Work Order Escalation

• Labor Escalation

• Asset Escalation

• Purchase Order Escalation

• Project Escalation

Rules tied to Escalation Events display criteria to define the escalation aspect of the rule on the bottom of the Event tab. Escalation Events support two general types of escalation:

• Rules created based on elapsed time, allowing for important notifications when anticipated actions are not taken.

  For example, a work order escalation rule could send a notification if a high priority work order was not assigned or responded to in a specified period of time.

• Rules that proactively notify users of items requiring attention based on date criteria.

  For example, a rule could be created to notify an administrator that an asset is within a month of ending its warranty coverage, prompting a check on the equipment prior to this date. Or, an escalation rule could be tied to the next evaluation date on labor records, providing notification that a review is due or past due.

There are numerous parameters that can be set to define the Escalation Rule:

• Escalation Schedule: The frequency at which the rule should be checked (every 15 minutes, every 2 hours, every month). In addition, the days of the week and hours of the day can be specified, ensuring that actions only occur during regular business hours.

• Escalation Criteria: The elapsed time window around a given date (before or after). This Escalation Criteria works in conjunction with the Rule Criteria defined on the Criteria tab.

• Recurrence: How often the designated Rule action should be repeated if the Rule Criteria is still met. The Recurrence frequency can be at a different interval than the Escalation Rule frequency, allowing the rule to be checked every 5 minutes, but a second action (such as an email) to only be sent if the problem has still not been addressed in an hour.

• Maximum Records: Specifies the maximum number of records that should be subject to the Rule action each time the rule is checked. This variable is especially helpful when testing (as it can be set low), and is also a check against an error in defined criteria that could result in too many records being acted upon.