The purpose of this blog is to describe the different servicing methods in SAS Alert Triage. Servicing is an approach of alert assignment that ensures the highest priority alerts are worked first. There are two methods of servicing, Priority servicing and Direct servicing.
First, let’s review how alerts are organized. Within a Domain, there are Triage Types that are used to group Queues. Triage Types and Queues both support servicing priorities, while only queues can have a routing priority associated with them. Servicing priorities allow the system to prioritize Triage Types and Queues when a user is servicing alerts while routing priorities, alongside routing rules, determine which queue a given alert will land in.
Initiating priority servicing is as simple as pressing the “Start priority servicing” button on either the homepage or the servicing page within SAS Alert Triage. Once the user has clicked this button the system will first identify all of the queues that user has access to. A user has access to a queue, and the alerts in that queue, if they are part of the user group that is associated with that queue.
Once the system has identified all of the queues that the user is associated with it will then identify the triage type with the highest servicing priority that one of these queues is associated with. After the triage type with the highest servicing priority has been identified the system then checks whether there are alerts in any of the queues grouped under that triage type, starting with the queue that has the highest servicing priority.
Once a queue has been identified that contains alerts the system picks the alert that appears at the top of that queue’s sort order. The sort order of each queue is administratively defined and can target any information on an alert. For instance, the alerts in a given queue could be sorted by the “date created” field to ensure that the newest alert is always appearing at the top of that queue’s sort order.
Direct servicing works in a similar fashion, just that the user is picking the triage type rather than the system. Selecting the triage type is very straightforward with users simply making a selection from a drop down list. Once a triage type has been selected the user can click the “Start direct servicing” button located alongside the drop down to initiate the servicing process. As with priority servicing, direct servicing can be initiated from either the homepage or the servicing page.
Let’s say we have two users, Mike and Jill, each with access to all Triage Types and Queues within a given Domain. Mike has both the “Direct Servicing” and “Priority Servicing” capabilities and can therefore work in either servicing pattern. Upon clicking “Start priority servicing” the system presents him with the alert appearing at the top of the high priority queue’s sort order. This is because the high priority queue is the queue with the highest queue servicing priority under the triage type with the triage type highest servicing priority, namely the credit card triage type.
Jill, on the other hand, only has the “Direct Servicing” capability, meaning that she will not see the “Start priority servicing” button. To begin servicing Jill must choose either the credit card or debit card from the drop down associated with the Direct servicing component. Having selected the debit card triage type, and pressing the “Start direct servicing” button, the system will present Jill with the alert appearing at the top of the high value queue’s sort order. This will be the case as the high value queue is the queue with the highest queue servicing priority under the debit card triage type that Jill chose
Alert servicing ensures that a user completes an alert before moving on to another alert. This is achieved by automatically locking the surfaced alert against the user. The user must then apply a disposition to the alert in order to release the lock on the alert. The intent behind enforcing the lock until the disposition is applied is to discourage users from simply releasing the lock on alerts that they might find difficult to work in hopes of being presented with an easier alert upon re-initiating servicing.
A major benefit of servicing is that users can also quickly move from one alert to the next as part of applying a disposition. As part of applying a disposition Jill or Mark can press the “Update & continue” button to have the disposition applied and the system pick out the next alert that they should be working, based on the servicing pattern they originally initiated. This ensures that users are fully utilized and the redundant clicks of re-initiating servicing from the homepage, or servicing page, are eliminated.
To view more information about SAS Alert Triage, please visit https://support.sas.com/en/software/sas-alert-triage-support.html
