Within an Escalation rule when using an onscreen notifications action it is possible to manage the dismissal of that notifications via the Escalation table. If the Column within the onscreen notification is set to Escl_DateTime then for every onscreen notification an entry is added to the Escalations table. When the notification is dismissed this field is updated to null and the onscreen notification for that particular record no longer appears.
When sending an email via an escalation rule by default there is no restriction on the number of times an email is sent for a particular record. So if the SQL clause is something like the below
Orde_Status = 'Active'
Then every time the escalation service runs an email is sent for each active order, regadless as to whether or not an email has already been sent for that order. Is it possible to use the Esclations table so that an email is sent only once per order?
Something I have tried is to create a second action within my escalation rule which is a Set Column Value to update the Column Escl_DateTime. However when the rule is run there are no entries added to the Escalation table so I cannot determine whether or not an email for a record has already been sent.
I am aware that there are two workarounds to this, but neither really fit my needs.
- Entity Level Notifications - These would be great apart from the fact that you cannot us a dynamic criteria. For example it is not possible (as far as I am aware) to set a criteria which says list orders updated in the last 7 days, it is only possible to use a static date.
- Add A Custom field which is updated when the escalation rule runs - This works (and I have used it in the past) but this is a messy thing to do, especially when there are multiple escalation rules. Adding numerious fields just to determine whether or not an email has been sent is a little excessive, should this not be trackable within the escalations functionality.
In addition I have also struggled to see how exactly the escalations work. Is the escalation table only updatable by an onscreen notification rule? Can an entry in this table only be made from the onscreen notification? Also, when exactly is the entry added to the Escalations table? For instance when an opportunity is created an entry is also added to the Escalations table as soon as the opportunity is saved. Running a SQL trace an insert clause is run directly against the Escalations table rather than the view as specified within the rule itself.