Escalations

Catch control-point breaches automatically, work the escalation queue, and set up the manager and owner email hops.

An escalation is raised automatically when a control point breaches — a required task goes overdue past its grace window, or a log reading comes in out of range. You never create one by hand: the system opens it, notifies the right people, and keeps ratcheting up the urgency until someone deals with it.

Note: Anyone who can view checklists in the console can see the escalations queue. Resolving, waiving, or reassigning an escalation needs the checklist-approval permission (ops.checklists.approve) — managers and admins.

Tiers and urgency

Every escalation carries a tier from 1 to 3 — the higher the tier, the more urgent:

An escalation that nobody touches climbs the ladder on its own: it starts at tier 1 and is bumped to tier 2 and then tier 3 as it ages (after 30 and 60 minutes by default), widening who gets notified each time — outlet first, then cluster, then the whole organisation. Each row shows a tier badge, and the people who have been notified appear as recipient chips under the title.

The two-hop email flow

For overdue tasks, the email chain has up to two hops, configured under Admin config > Settings:

1. Manager hop (always on). When a task blows past its deadline by the Notify the manager after window (default 30 minutes), an escalation opens and the outlet’s on-call manager is emailed.
2. Owner hop (optional). Switch on Escalate to the owner and set Notify the owner after. If the manager still hasn’t acted — the escalation is still sitting untouched, neither triaged nor resolved — the organisation owner is emailed once that window passes, counted from when the manager was first notified.

Note: Only the owner can change these settings. The owner is emailed at most once per escalation, even when the tier ladder also reaches organisation level.

Completing the overdue task auto-resolves its escalation — staff finishing the work is always the cleanest fix.

Working the queue

Open Escalations in the console sidebar (under Operate — the badge shows the live open count). The page lists everything awaiting a manager, split into two sections:

• Open — new breaches nobody has picked up yet.
• Triaged — escalations already reassigned to someone, still awaiting resolution.

Each row shows the tier badge, title, outlet, how long it has been open, recipient chips, and — for triaged items — who it is assigned to. Click a row to open the detail drawer, which adds:

• Source context — for a log breach, the exact Reading that flagged with an “Out of range” marker on the offending value; for a task breach, the Task that breached with its due and done times.
• Timeline — every lifecycle event (opened, tier bumps, reassignments, waivers) with who did it and when.

Actions

Three buttons sit on every row and in the drawer footer:

• Resolve — the underlying issue is fixed. You can add an optional waiver reason before confirming.
• Waive — close the escalation without fixing it (say, a sensor misread). A reason is mandatory and is saved to the audit log.
• Reassign — hand it to another staff member. Pick the person and give a reason (both mandatory, audited). The escalation moves to Triaged.

Warning: Waiving is a real sign-off — it closes the escalation with your name and reason on record. Don’t waive to tidy the queue; resolve or reassign instead.

Status lifecycle

An escalation moves through three states:

1. Open — raised, waiting for a manager.
2. Triaged — reassigned to someone; still counts as unresolved.
3. Resolved — closed, either by fixing the source, by Resolve, or by a waiver.

What staff see

When you reassign an escalation, the underlying work lights up on that staff member’s Today board: the checklist card gets a red outline and a priority pill carrying the tier’s word — Due, Urgent, or High priority — so it cannot be missed among the day’s ordinary cards.

Where escalations roll up

Escalations surface in every monitoring view, always from the same live numbers:

• The Overview home shows an Escalations stat card and the top of the open queue.
• Each outlet card in Outlets carries an ESCAL count, and the sidebar Escalations badge totals them.
• Reports includes an escalations sparkline so you can see whether breaches are trending up or down over the period.

See Monitoring your outlets for how these views fit together.