BCM - Is it possible to trigger Crisis Event from an Incident or Major Incident

[Chris Gordon]

In ITSM Incident - is there a way to declare a disaster and and initiate a Crisis Event > Plan in BCM ?

The idea being - when there is a major outage, a P1 incident will be generated and if the incident cannot resolve the outage and restore service within the P1 priority SLA (lets say 8 hours or less) - at what point do you declare a disaster and move from the Incident into a Crisis Event and declare a Disaster and activate the DR Plan ??  Its a major requirement and it seems to be a challenge going from a traditional SN Console record of Incident and trigger creation and relating into a Crisis Event that lives exclusively inside the BCM Workspace.

Please explain

[edneyimme]

Yes, in ServiceNow ITSM (Incident Management), you can declare a disaster and initiate a Crisis Event in Business Continuity Management (BCM), though this involves configuring workflows that link the Incident Management process with BCM. The process essentially transitions an incident into a crisis scenario if the service cannot be restored within the P1 SLA (e.g., 8 hours or less). Here's how you can approach it:

Steps to Declare a Disaster and Initiate Crisis Event:
Escalation Mechanism in Incident Management:

Create a business rule or workflow to automatically escalate the incident if it has not been resolved within the designated SLA (e.g., 8 hours). This triggers a review or transition to a crisis event.

The business rule can check if the incident exceeds the P1 SLA, and based on that, a trigger can initiate the creation of a Crisis Event in BCM.

Triggering the Crisis Event:

Once the Incident has exceeded the SLA and is not resolved, it can be linked to a Crisis Event in the BCM Workspace.

This involves creating a workflow that automatically creates a Crisis Event record when the SLA is breached. The Crisis Event should reference the Incident and capture details like outage scope, impact, and affected services.

Integration with BCM (Business Continuity Management):

Use ServiceNow BCM to activate the Disaster Recovery (DR) plan. You’ll need to configure the Crisis Event to trigger related DR Plans, which could include the automatic notification of the DR team, initiation of recovery processes, and task assignment for the response.

Linking ITSM Incident to BCM Crisis Event:

Cross-record linking: The Incident record can be linked to the Crisis Event record within the BCM workspace. This ensures both teams (ITSM and BCM) are aware of the crisis and can collaborate on recovery efforts.

Set up relationships between Incident and Crisis Event so that updates in one system (e.g., Incident Management) are reflected in the Crisis Event and vice versa.

Dashboard and Notifications:

To ensure a seamless transition and visibility, set up dashboards in ServiceNow for both the Incident Management team and the Crisis Event team to monitor and respond to the outage.

Configure notifications to alert key stakeholders once the transition to a Crisis Event is initiated, so that the appropriate recovery actions can be taken.

Key Considerations:
Ensure that the BCM workspace is properly set up to handle Crisis Events and that all necessary stakeholders (e.g., DR teams, IT, communications teams) are included in the crisis workflow.

You may also need to configure task automation and escalation paths for the Crisis Event, such as triggering additional tasks for recovery steps, notifications for DR teams, or updating status in external systems.

Example Workflow:
Incident is created with P1 priority.

Incident SLA (e.g., 8 hours) starts ticking.

If the SLA exceeds 8 hours without resolution, a Business Rule triggers the creation of a Crisis Event.

The Crisis Event automatically links to the P1 Incident.

The Crisis Event triggers the appropriate DR Plan in the BCM workspace, activating recovery processes.

Communication and updates are sent to relevant teams via ServiceNow notifications.

If you’re looking to implement this integration, I recommend checking out the official ServiceNow documentation on Business Continuity Management (BCM) and Incident Management for specific setup details. You can find it in the ServiceNow docs or Community forums.

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