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Adding Escalation Times to Entitlements

Escalation times are deadlines that can be added to entitlements to ensure that events are escalated to the appropriate parties at the appropriate intervals. You can use the Siebel Business Process Designer to manage such business processes. For example, you can automate the following: event escalation; notification of appropriate employees; work routing, assignment, and processing; enforcement of authorization and transition rules.

Escalation times differ from committed times in that they allow proactive rather than reactive notification. Escalation warnings are signalled before a contractual commitment has been breached, rather than afterwards like the committed times.

Using a Service Request Workflow for Escalation

You can activate a workflow process to automatically alert a predetermined manager when the following apply:

• An incident or problem record has reached the escalation date and time.
• The status is still Open.

An email should be sent to the manager when an incident or problem record has breached the committed date or time. The email should include the following information:

• A list of all incidents and problems that have reached their escalation date and time
• A list of all the incidents and problems that have breached their committed date time and by how much

These lists should include the SR number, Type, Priority, Title, Escalation Date Time, Committed Date Time, and the Owner for each record.

Process for Activating the Workflow

To enable service request email notification, you must perform the following tasks:

1. Set the communications profile argument called CommProfile on the workflow to the account name of the POP3 email server—for example, support@Demohost.Siebel.com. This populates the From line on the email. See To set the communications profiles for the AlertEscalation Email workflow and To configure the AlertsEscalation Email workflow using Siebel Tools.
2. Using eScript, change the business service to enter the manager who receives the email and the polling period, during which the workflow checks for all the incident and problems records that have breached their Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and the ones that are in risk of breaching their SLAs.

To set the communications profiles for the AlertEscalation Email workflow

1. Navigate to the Administration - Communications screen > Communications Drivers and Profiles view.
2. In the Communications Drivers list, select the Internet SMTP/POP3 Server record.
3. Scroll down to the Profiles list to review the profiles you can use—for example, support@abc.com or HelpDesk@abc.com.
4. Set the AlertEscalation Email workflow's communications profile argument (CommProfile) to the account name of the POP3 email server by completing the following steps:
   1. In the Profile Parameters Overrides list, click New.
   2. In the Name field, select POP3 Server.
   3. In the Value field, enter the value for the communications driver, for example, support@abc.com.

After you have found the correct communications profile, change the AlertsEscalation Email workflow using Siebel Tools, as described in the following procedure.

To configure the AlertsEscalation Email workflow using Siebel Tools

1. Log into Siebel Tools as an administrator.
2. In the Object Explorer, navigate to Workflow Process.
3. Query for the AlertEscalation Email workflow.
4. the Workflow Processes list, right-click and select Edit Workflow Process.
5. In the Process Designer, select Call Send SR Escalation Alert Email.
6. Right-click and select Show Input Arguments.
7. Note that the first parameter in the Input Arguments list is called CommProfile.
8. Change the literal parameter for CommProfile to the name of the profile you wish to use.

   For example, this could be support@abc.com.

   NOTE:  See Siebel Communications Server Administration Guide for more information on creating a new profile for SR Escalation messages.

9. Deploy and activate the workflow.

   TIP:   If you want to change the format of the email or the subject line, select the Send SR Escalation Alert Email business service and change the eScript through the Edit Server Script option on the business service. When the changes are complete, recompile the business service.