SEAMLESS AUTOMATED ALERT ESCALATION
Linked alerts that ensure results
Public
safety
Critical alerts to first responders – escalate call through different channels and escalate to senior teams.
Enhance your notification solution with multiple, automated alert escalation options
There are many reasons to incorporate an automated alert escalation capability into your notification solution. Automating any aspect of a workflow will free-up time and resources to focus on more critical tasks. For notification systems, the ability to escalate can help ensure action is taken as quickly as possible, without the need for human intervention – from reaching the next available responder to securing late payments. This blog post explores how different escalation scenarios can be accommodated through Alerting Hub.
What is an automated alert escalation?
As the name suggests, an automated alert escalation triggers a number of tasks automatically. What action is triggered will depend on the ‘result’ or ‘action’ taken previously. Very simply – “if this happens/doesn’t happen” do this next. Of course, it may mean that no further action is required (the first support team have responded, or the invoice was paid after the first email reminder). In instances where further action is required the system can respond immediately, triggering notifications to be sent to alternate recipients or sent via different channels.
Public
IT
monitoring
Ensure the on-call support team are notified and support tickets escalated to senior teams if unresolved.
Business continuity
Ensure management team are notified and updated – whether at home, in the office or out in the field.
Accounts receivable
Send invoice payment reminders to clients and escalate through more intrusive channels.
Escalation options | Different contacts | Different channels
Depending on the nature of your solution, your automated alert escalation may need to trigger very different types of action e.g. call one person/group first and if no response escalate to second nominated person/group. Alternatively, it could send an email to a contact and if no response is received send text alert. Take the following two scenarios.
Business continuity – responders
Whether it is a danger to life event or a critical IT system outage, ensuring the teams responsible for managing or resolving the incident are notified – as quickly as possible – is vital. An automated escalation process can manage the initial call out to the first response team and then, should the call not be answered, escalate further up the chain of command.
Accounts receivable – invoice chasing
Accounts receivable systems enable businesses to automatically send clients payment reminders when an invoice is due or overdue. An automated alert escalation process helps ensure payment requests aren’t ignored. If the initial requires is ignored (no response) then the system can automatically trigger a follow-up, perhaps using a more intrusive channel such as a text or voice call – helping to encourage customers to pay promptly.
Alerting Hub has these different scenarios covered using the concept of ‘linked alerts’. The following walks through the key components needed to create escalations.
Configuring an automated alert escalation with Alerting hub
The need for an automated alert escalation feature – to enhance many types of notification system – led Alerting Hub to create a seamless way to integrate such a capability. There are two key elements: the system needs to know who will receive the messages; it then needs to know when and how they will receive them.
The automated escalation process
Escalation and linked alerts allow you to filter who receives future alerts based on their responses to previous alerts. Contact groups are used in an escalation process as it is often necessary to match different methods of contacting a person (e.g. their telephone number and email address) depending on the stage of escalation.
The 1st alert in a set of linked alerts must contain a ‘contact-group‘ (either an inline one or a stored one) all subsequent linked-alerts use the contact-group from the 1st alert.
Links between alerts are specified using a linkedAlerts JSON object within each /sendalert, such as:
"linkedAlerts": {
"linkRef": "a-unique-reference",
"lifetime": "300d",
"linkOnlyIfRefAlreadyExists": false
}
Once you’ve created linked alerts using a common linkRef value, you must then, for each linked alert you wish to use escalation on, tell each alert element what to do based on what has happened in previous alerts. Currently, escalation uses responses (email replies, SMS replies, shortlink clicks and voice call digit pressing) to ascertain what to do on the next alert.
To enable escalation on a linked alert you must specify a ‘linkedAlertModifiers” JSON object. This is at the level of each alert item (sms, email or call) so escalation can be fine-grained across numerous alert items within a single alert.
Accounts receivable escalation example:
Who will be receiving notifications
The following sample code specifies the contact group details and also issues bespoke (to each contact) sms and emails. Note these could have been previously stored using the /storecontent api but are shown inline.
{
"version": "latest",
"apiKey": "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz",
"clientRef": "a-reference",
"contactGroup": {
"inlineContactGroup": {
"name": "invoicesowed",
"contacts": [
{
"id": "name-0",
"sms": "+447976100000",
"email": "simon@x.com",
"call": "+447976200000",
"lookups": {
"firstname": "Simon",
"amount": "£100.00"
}
},
{
"id": "name-1",
"sms": "+447976100001",
"email": "mark@y.com",
"call": "+447976200001",
"lookups": {
"firstname": "Mark",
"amount": "£200.00"
}
},
{
"id": "name-2",
"sms": "+447976100002",
"email": "faye@z.com",
"call": "+447976200002",
"lookups": {
"firstname": "Faye",
"amount": "£300.00"
}
}
]
}
},
"linkedAlerts": {
"linkRef": "sms-n-email-then-call"
},
"alert": [
{
"alertType": "sms",
"tag": "tag1",
"contactSets": [
"all"
],
"content": "Dear {firstname}, our records show you owe {amount}. To make a secure payment please follow this link {shortlink}.",
"contentEncoding": "utf8",
"sender": "ACME",
"lookups": {
"performLookups": true,
"shortlink": {
"reference": "a-reference",
"url": "https://my-companies-url.com/alertinghub-click-through"
}
}
},
{
"alertType": "email",
"tag": "tag2",
"to": "Undisclosed-recipients",
"sender": "ACME",
"replyTo": "ACME",
"subject": "Outstanding invoice",
"contactSets": [
"all"
],
"content": "Dear {firstname}, our records show you owe {amount}. To make a secure payment please follow this link {shortlink}.\n",
"contentEncoding": "utf8",
"lookups": {
"performLookups": true,
"shortlink": {
"reference": "a-reference",
"url": "https://my-companies-url.com/alertinghub-click-through"
}
}
}
]
}
The escalation process
This escalation sample shows how a voice call is triggered and made to those contacts from the first invoice chasing alert that haven’t responded (paid) via sms/email/shortlink. These two alerts could be sent as two /sendalert calls one after the other or they could be sent in one go using the /sendalerts api call.
{
"version": "latest",
"apiKey": "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz",
"clientRef": "a-reference",
"linkedAlerts": {
"linkRef": "sms-n-email-then-call"
},
"alert": [
{
"alertType": "call",
"sender": "+447777100100",
"options": {
"schedule": {
"start": "now",
"delay": "3d"
}
},
"linkedAlertModifiers": {
"except": {
"previouslySeen": "sms,email,shortlink"
}
},
"contactSets": [
"all"
],
"tag": "t1",
"voiceFormat": "tts",
"content": "Hello, this is a message for {firstname}, we have tried to contact you by text and email but have not heard back from you. Our records indicate you owe {amount} and we would appreciate you contacting us on 07777123123. Please press any key on your phone keypad to let us know you have heard this message so that we don't call you with the same reminder. Thank you.",
"contentEncoding": "utf8",
"ivrControl": {
"ivrRequireResponse": true,
"ivrAttempts": 3
},
"lookups": {
"performLookups": true,
"uniqueLookups": true
}
}
]
}
