Escalation Management: Service Level Agreements (SLA)
This section discusses Escalation Management.
Escalation management is widely used for IT service management and is also part of the ITIL recommendations. Created escalation processes can ensure that unresolved problems do not linger, and issues are promptly addressed. Escalation criteria such as missed deadlines are defined and result in appropriate actions, such as a change of status or a notification to a project member. Codebeamer can send notifications and take automatic action (via the Tracker workflow) whenever users (via the GUI) and clients (via the remote API) submit and modify issues, or certain events or times are reached.
Using Escalation, Trackers can be configured so that issues that meet user defined escalation criteria, that is issues that need extra attention, can be automatically flagged, so that they can become more visible in a timely fashion. The escalation trigger conditions and resulting actions are user defined.
The examples in this chapter are based on the default Codebeamer roles, fields, workflow and working time, and an idealized scenario, where issues are submitted before their intended start (and end) date and the intended end date is at least the number of estimated hours (of working time) after the scheduled start date, but you can also use custom roles, fields, workflow and working time with the Escalation Management.
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The Escalation Management functionality is only available within the ALM-Edition, and consulting services is mandatory to use this feature.
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Please note that the escalation rules are checked periodically in 5–minute intervals. As a result, the actual triggering time of rules can vary up to 5 minutes delay from its configured offset.
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For more information, see:
• Trackers
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Escalation can easily generate an overwhelming number of emails (notifications). Please contact PTC Technical Support for help with setting up Escalation. The following examples are for information purposes only. Great care should be taken in estimating the effect of escalation rules.
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Figure: Escalation Schematic Overview Diagram
