Creating Owner Group hierarchies for automatic assignment of Incidents

You use the Person Groups application to create and manage Owner Groups and assignment sequences for automatic assignment of owners to Incidents. Incidents that are escalated are assigned to an Owner Group that is responsible for processing and responding to the ticket within a specified time period.

In the Person Groups application you can create, view, edit, duplicate, or delete Owner Groups.

The 'Next Person Group' field in the Person Groups application is used to specify the next Owner Group that should be assigned if no one in the current Owner Group is available to respond to the ticket. The Next Person Group attribute allows you to link groups, and allows you to create person group hierarchies for escalation. A group can have 0 or 1 next person groups.

Only valid person group values can be entered in the Next Person Group field. If you enter an invalid group in the field you will be prompted to enter a valid group or go back to the previous group that was specified in the field. If you enter a group in the Next Person Group field, and that group is already linked to the current person group, you will be prompted to enter a group that is not linked to the current group or go back to the previous group that was specified in the field.

You can view group hierarchies in the Group Sequence tab. Groups can be arranged in a logical hierarchy. When the escalation process is invoked, the assigned owner on the Incident changes in line with these hierarchies (group to group and person to person) as defined by the business needs.

For more information on setting up person groups, see the Person Groups section of the Infocenter.