Escalation setup for Replies & Messages (Super User)

While the member reply option isn't supposed to be used for reporting crime, it's important that if a user does report a serious problem, these issues can be escalated and dealt with properly.

The Escalation feature can be used to detect certain key words in an alert reply or incoming message and then automatically assign these replies to a specified team.

To access the feature, click on the 'site configuration' icon then 'Escalation Setup'.

From here, you will have the option to configure a default escalation setup. You will also see the option to add a new local escalation setup. You may also see some local escalation setups, which you can edit, if some have been added already.

Configure Default Escalation Setup

On the default escalation page, you will have the option to add any words to the escalation word list. These are the words, which if detected in a member of the public's reply, will cause the message to be escalated. There will be a default list of words and phrases in place already.

You will also have the option to set a default escalation team as well. This is the team that an escalated reply will be assigned to. However If you have local escalation teams setup as well, the local escalation teams will receive the escalated replies instead and the default escalation team will only be used as a fallback for areas where local escalation teams have not been set up.

Add new local escalation setup

Local escalation setups can be used to have separate teams deal with escalated replies, for separate areas. As a result, if you wish for all escalated replies to go to one team, only the default escalation setup should be used.

When adding a local escalation setup, you can first set the name and the team to be escalated to:

From there, you can select an area for this setup to apply to and click 'Set Areas For Local Escalation Setup' to save it.

If I chose Wales, in the example above, for any members of the public that are mapped to Wales (based on their registered address) and reply with a message to be escalated, this will be assigned to the particular team I have set for that local escalation setup.

Please note that for escalation setups, they will still make use of the escalation word list found on the default escalation setup page.

Receiving escalated replies

If you belong to a team assigned to deal with escalated replies, when one is assigned to your team, you should receive an email from [e-mail] to notify you of this.

For information on how to view and deal with replies, including escalated replies, please access the following guide: Managing Replies, Escalated Replies and Incoming Messages