When an Incident is logged within the system, it is allocated to the Team that is associated with the SLAs and Workflows applied to the Incident or to the default Team assigned to a Workflow State.
The appropriate Incident Workflow is assigned within the Incident Summary tab, by selecting an option from the Workflows drop-down list. This list is derived from the SLA assigned to the Customer, Organizational Unit and Item. Once the Workflow is selected, the associated Teams are available for assignment. Based on the Team assigned, a Technician in Layer One of escalation is allocated to work on the Incident. This can be adjusted manually, if required.
The Incident is automatically escalated according to the SLA assigned to the Incident and the triggers configured within the Priority of the SLA. An Incident is escalated if the assigned User exceeds the Escalation trigger point defined for the Response, Restoration or Resolution time of the assigned SLA, when the assigned Workflow State is an SLA Active State. Or, it can be manually escalated by a User, if required.
When an Incident is assigned to a User, the system follows a series of steps to look for the most appropriate Technician for the job, based on skill set, location and workload. The order of business logic is as follows:
The system will identify the Team associated with the Incident's SLA and associated Workflows
The system will find Technicians/Supervisors assigned to the Team
If Users are assigned to an Organizational Unit, the system will identify the Users that belong to the same Organizational Unit as associated with the Incident by the Customer assignment
If Classifications/Skills are assigned to Users, the system will find Technicians/Supervisors assigned to the Incident's selected Classification
Based on the Team configuration, if the Live Priority option is enabled for the Team, the system will look for a User who is logged into the system
The system verifies Work Hours/Availability of Users within the Team for appropriate Incident assignment
The system will assign the Request to the User who has the lowest workload, i.e., the fewest number of Open or Pending Incidents
If there is a tie, the system randomly allocates the Request to a User in the tie.
If a more appropriate Team member is available, the User assigned to the Incident can re-assign it manually by selecting a Technician from the drop-down Technician list in the Incident Information screen.
Note, if the Self Assign option is enabled for the Team, the system assignment logic is ignored and the User creating the request is automatically assigned the Incident.
An Incident's Service Level Agreement includes trigger points that set the rate at which automated escalations will occur for an Incident. Auto-escalation is triggered when the number of support hours specified for either an Incident's Service Level Response, Restoration or Resolution time is exceeded and the SLA Trigger action is set to Escalate. When it is escalated, the Incident is reassigned to a Technician in the next escalation level and an email is sent to the newly assigned Technician. This process repeats itself until either the Incident Status changes to an inactive State, for example, Closed - Resolved, On Hold, Closed Change Request, or until all of the Team's available escalation layers are exhausted.
If the Incident Team has more than one escalation layer, the Technician assigned to the Incident can escalate it to the next escalation layer by clicking the escalate icon next to the Technician name. If the Incident is allocated to a second layer of escalation or higher, the Incident can be returned to a lower escalation state by clicking the de-escalate button next to the Technician name.
An Incident's Technician and the Technician's Supervisor are able to reassign the Incident to one of the listed Technicians in the Technicians drop-down list by selecting their name and clicking Save to accept the change.
NOTE: Upon an Automated or a Manual Escalation, the requests automatically enter the holding bay of the corresponding layer if the Queues are enabled.
If the Escalation Control functionality is enabled in Admin>Setup>Privileges>Requests, there is the option to enable or disable escalation within the Incident Information Summary screen.
This option is only visible to Supervisor Users. Once an Incident is created, a Supervisor can elect to switch the Escalation option to Off. This means all SLA timers stop, which prevents escalation. Switching the option back to On will re-start the timer and reactivate the SLA triggers.