Overview of Incident Rule Functionality

Creating Rules for Incidents      Examples: Configuring Status-Based Acknowledgments

Using iSupport Rules for Service Level Agreements

Incident rules perform actions when specified conditions based on Incident record fields or events are met. This functionality can be used to automatically:

• Change values in the Assignee, Category, Customer, Impact, Urgency, Status, Publish to mySupport, and Priority fields, as well as any custom fields; an email server account and template can also be set
• Create a related incident and apply an incident template or hierarchy template
• Send notifications via email, Desktop, and SMS
• Route via load balancing or the round robin method
• Initiate an approval cycle
• Execute a webhook for posting Incident data to a web application

You can use time-based rules for service level agreements (SLAs); for example, you can configure a rule to route, change priority, send an email, etc. after a certain amount of time has passed.

In order for a rule to be evaluated, it must be included in a rule group. When an incident is saved, the matching rule group is first determined. Then, all rules in that matching rule group are evaluated. If a rule’s conditions are met, its actions are performed.

Rule groups are applied to incidents through customers, companies, category combinations, and incident and hierarchy templates. (A default rule group will apply if none are applicable.) See Configuring Rule Groups for more information.

Rule Groups

A default incident rule group will be included in iSupport on installation or upgrade. Upgrades will convert previously configured Service Level Agreement functionality into rules and rule groups.

Rule groups are applied to incidents through customers, companies, category combinations, and incident and hierarchy templates. (If a customer profile does not have an associated rule group, the rule group associated with the customer’s company will be used for the customer.) You can specify the order of precedence if multiple rule groups apply, and the rule group designated as default will be used if none are applicable. Note that rules in the associated rule group will not execute while an incident is pending approval.

Rule Types

• On Incident Save rules do not incorporate time frames; when an incident is saved, rules in the associated rule group are evaluated, and if true, their actions are performed.

  

• Time-Based rules incorporate time frames with conditions; when conditions are true upon incident save, the date and time that the interval time frame would be reached is recorded and monitored by the Time-Based Rule agent.  This agent runs every minute.

  

If the conditions required to meet the rule do not change before the interval time frame is reached, the agent performs the actions specified. If conditions change prior to the recorded date and time:

• Time-Based rules will clear all pending actions and if conditions are met again the time frame will restart.
• Time-Based: Cumulative rules will suspend all pending actions and if conditions are met again the time frame will include previous amounts of time in which conditions were met.

If a rule contains conditions with the Customer Work History Added, Work History Added to Incident, or Acknowledged events, the rule will be triggered immediately when the event occurs (even if the incident hasn't been saved).  Any other changes in the incident will not be saved until you save the incident.

• If a date or date/time custom field is created for incidents or the Followup feature is enabled in Feature Basics, Time-Based: Important Dates rules enable you to specify a number of days before or after the value in a specified date field. This type of rule will be evaluated when the defined number of days before or after the value in the specified date field occurs. Actions will be performed if the rule's conditions are met at the time the Time-Based Rule agent runs.