Escalation provides a method for automatically responding to a notification:

  • As soon as the notification is received by the Global Manager.

  • When the notification satisfies certain conditions.

    Automatic escalation can enhance your problem resolution process by:

  • Dispatching maintenance staff with a description of hardware failures and the specific parts they will need.

  • Restoring service by restarting applications, initiating failover processes, or rerouting services around failed components.

  • Notifying customers of service outages and providing status updates.

  • Alerting successive layers of management of unresolved problems to ensure that they receive the proper level of attention.

    Escalation helps prevent important notifications from being overlooked or ignored and can immediately start the process of remedying the situation that caused the notification.

    For example, you can create an escalation policy that is activated when a specific router goes down. When this notification occurs, the Global Manager matches it to the appropriate escalation policy and path. The path then begins invoking tools such as opening a trouble ticket and paging technicians.

    A notification continues to escalate while it matches the filter criteria of the path. As time progresses, the notification may escalate to different levels in the path based on the duration, and the path may invoke additional tools to respond to the notification. If the status of the notification changes in such a way so that it no longer matches the path’s filter criteria, the notification no longer escalates to the next path level.

    For example, if a Router Down notification matches against the path filter for 15 minutes, the notification is escalated to the next level. At this level, the escalation path could invoke a tool that sends email to a manager. But, if a technician acknowledges the notification after 10 minutes, and this acknowledgement causes the notification to no longer match the path filter criteria, the notification does not escalate to the next level.