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Response Interval Option

When the Use Response Interval box is checked, the time attributed to the incident is based on the response interval for the incident. The response interval is associated with either the default response requirements or with specific response requirements that are configured for a service level agreement (SLA) that is applied to the incident.

That is, if your default response requirements are configured for 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Monday through Friday, if your escalation rule is set to escalate in 4 hours and the Use Response Interval box is checked, the incident will only escalate during the hours specified in the response requirements. The incident will not escalate in the evenings or night or on weekends. The four hours must elapse during the response intervals that are configured.

If you select Days as the unit for the time element, one day corresponds to 24 hours. Again, if you check the Use Response Interval box, this means that that number of hours based on the default response requirements must pass before the incident is escalated. If you use 1 Day with the User Response Interval box checked and your response requirements have 8 hours specified each day, then this corresponds to 3 work days (of eight hours each).

See also Answer ID 128: Rules are not escalating incidents as soon as they should.

Revalidate Option

When the Revalidate check box is enabled, the escalation conditions are checked every time the record is saved to determine if the record still meets the criteria to be escalated. If the record has been edited so that the escalation criteria are no longer met, the scheduled escalation is cancelled and the record will not be escalated, even though it initially met the original criteria.

Note that, with this option enabled, meeting the conditions in the escalation rule at the time of the expected escalation is not sufficient. If the incident has been edited again after the escalation rule was hit, but before the utility ran to escalate the record, it is also necessary that the last edit on the record triggers the escalation rule. Otherwise, the escalation will be canceled when the record is edited. 

An example of revalidation: If the escalation criteria indicates that an incident must be in the Unresolved status and assigned to a specific group in order for it to be escalated, if you check the Revalidate box, the incident will have to be in the Unresolved status and still assigned to the specific group at the time it is escalated in order for the escalation rule to take effect. If the incident is assigned to another group or is assigned to a different status such as Updated or a custom status, it will no longer meet the escalation criteria and will not be escalated. If the revalidate check box was not enabled, then the incident would be escalated, regardless of status and which group it was later assigned to.

Likewise, if an incident meets the criteria for escalation and the escalation rule is hit to schedule the escalation, but later the incident is edited and the escalation rule is no longer hit, either because the incident was moved to a different state, or the escalation rule is included in a function that is no longer called, then the escalation will no longer occur, even if the conditions in the escalation rule are still valid. 

See also Answer ID 5844: Incidents are not escalating as expected.

Recalculate Option

You can enable the Recalculate check box so that if an incident is updated before the escalation rule fires, the escalation time is recalculated based on the last time the incident was saved and updated.

Just as it does when you select Revalidate, the rules engine compares each object to the rule’s conditions when you select Recalculate. The incident, answer, or opportunity that is updated must continue to match the rule’s conditions in order for the escalation to be rescheduled. If updating the object changes it so it no longer matches one or more rule conditions, Recalculate will not be triggered.

For example, you can schedule an incident to be escalated 24 hours after it is updated. If the escalation rule has the Recalculate box enabled and the incident is updated within the 24 hours (before the incident is actually escalated), then the time of escalation will be recalculated based on the time of the last update.

Note: For the Recalculate feature to be meaningful, you must select a relative time value that is not static. If you select a static value (such as Time Created) for your rule, the escalation schedule will not be recalculated because the Time Created value remains constant even when the object is updated. If, however, you select Time Updated, escalation will be rescheduled because the Time Updated value changes when the object is updated.

Also see Answer ID 2181: Setting up escalation rules.