Alert Escalations
Escalations are an optional feature: please contact us on help@checkit.net to enable escalations.
Escalations enable you to notify an expanding number of users that an alert is outstanding, and will continue to expand until the alert is Acknowledged or Cleared.
Each escalation level, and which users are in those levels can all be defined in the Control Centre.
The intention of escalation is to:
Ensure that alerts that go unmanaged are dealt with by making more senior staff aware.
This has the knock on effect of encouraging users to action their alerts in a reasonable time to avoid the alert escalating.
Avoid unnecessary noise at the top level, so senior staff aren't alerted in every instance, but rather only when it really matters.
Escalation Contacts
Administrators, Safety Managers and Supervisors, who have valid e-mail addresses, can all be assigned as ‘Escalation Contacts’ to a Team. This means if an alert generated by a Team is left long enough to escalate, it will escalate to the ‘escalation contacts’, before escalating to another location. This is useful if you want to capture escalations before expanding the audience outside of the immediate location. If a team has no ‘Escalation Contacts’ then it will simply escalate to the next location (if one is assigned).
Setting up Escalations
Escalations are enabled on a per customer basis, those with it enabled see the additional UI elements required to set it up. By default, nothing will escalate. Users must be manually assigned as Escalation Contacts for teams, and locations must nominate the next location they will escalate to. Once this setup is done, escalations will follow the defined path.
On the Teams page (Select Configuration from the main menu and then select the Who tab) there’ is a field ‘Escalation Contacts’. This is where you can assign any user with an email to receive escalations for that Team before they escalate to the next location.
On the Where tab (Select Configuration from the main menu) a field on the inspector panel for each location enables you to specify another location to be nominated as the one alerts will escalate to. This can only be set by an Administrator.
Remember, all Work is configured to have a Location and a Team, so when an alert is generated by that team, the configured location will look to escalate to whichever is nominated on its where page.
Example Uses
Example 1: Tom is the GM of a store that’s part of a national franchise. His role type is Supervisor within Checkit. He has multiple locations within his store which have work completed by multiple teams. In the location hierarchy, above Tom’s store, is the group branch for his store type. Tom doesn’t want Alerts from his teams escalating to the branch level straight away, but as he’s not a Safety Manager he won’t receive alerts for the store level escalations. His company doesn’t want Tom to have Safety Manager privileges, so instead he assigns himself as an Escalation Contact to all the Teams within his store. Now when their alerts escalate, he gets notified and can action them before they go onto the branch level.
Example 2: Jane is responsible for the operational running of a large multi-site business. While she wants to be made aware of alerts that go unactioned, she doesn’t want to be notified of every alert generated as this would be an excessive amount. She’s assigned as Safety Manager for her business’ root location and configures escalations to direct from each of the sites within the business to the root location. In turn, each Team completing work at the leaf level is configured to work at the same sites that are now escalating to the root. Now if an alert isn’t actioned within the defined time, Jane receives a notification of the same alert, while also being told it’s been escalated.
Shown below, the icon used in reports to indicate an alert has been escalated.