Incident Automated reminders to Assignees

[umarknightr]

Hello All,

I got below mentioned requirement kindly any one please help me on this to achieve this requirement.

Module affected: ITSM-Incident, MIM, Problem, Change/Release

Who will use the technology:
This would be an automated reminder to Incident assignees (or the Assignment Group Owner if Incident is unassigned).

What will the technology do:
When an Incident has not been updated within the last 3 business days then ServiceNow will send a reminder email to the Incident Assignee, letting them know the Incident is unresolved and requires attention. The reminder would also prompt the user to add work notes if the Incident is not yet resolved.

What is the benefit of this request:
This will allow for reminders to be sent on all Incidents which have been pending resolution for greater than 3 days. Automation would mean that no record will ever inappropriately age without a reminder being sent.

Acceptance criteria:
-Every 3 business days an automatic reminder will be sent to the Assignee on an Incident, or the Assignment Group Manager if the Incident is unassigned.
-This reminder should include the Manager of the Assignee.
-The reminder would encourage the individual to either update the Incident with work notes for actions taken and next steps, or to provide resolution notes and Resolve the Incident.
-After sending 3 reminders for the same Incident, notify MajorIncidentManagement@zionsbancorp.com so the team can follow-up on the specific Incident which is pending.

Thanks in advance,

Umar Shaik.

[t_sadahisa]

Hello @umarknightr 

you can using a scheduled job or Flow to inspect the table daily and send a notification if any relevant records are found.

However, this approach may generate too many notifications, potentially causing operators to ignore reminders. Instead of automatic reminders, how about setting SLAs or SLOs and prioritizing action on records that have been pending for extended periods?
Additionally, it would be beneficial for the responsible team to discuss potential improvements to eliminate excessively long-pending records.

[Rafael Batistot]

Hi @umarknightr 

Ok, let's break this down...

1) in your incident table, create an new field to like name “reminder_count” that will be use to track, how many reminders already sent 

2) create 2 Event Registry (

• Go to System Policy > Events > Event Registry, Create events:
• incident.reminder → for sending reminder emails
• incident.escalation_notify → for escalation after 3 reminders

3) Create Notifications

• Go to System Notification > Notifications
• Create Reminder Notification:
  
• Trigger: incident.reminder
• Recipients:
  
• event.parm1 (the assigned_to sys_id)
• Manager of assigned_to (via user’s Manager relationship)
• If assigned_to is empty → send to Assignment Group Manager
• Email Body: Encourage updating work notes or resolving the Incident.
• Create Escalation Notification:
  
• Trigger: incident.escalation_notify
• Recipient: MajorIncidentManagement@zionsbancorp.com
• Reference:

https://www.servicenow.com/docs/bundle/zurich-platform-administration/page/administer/notification/t...

4) Create a Scheduled Job

• Navigate to System Definition > Scheduled Jobs (or Scheduled Script Executions in newer releases).
• Create a new scheduled job to run daily (only on business days — you can either filter with a Business Calendar or add script logic).
• In the script:
  
• Query incident table for records where:
  
• state != Resolved/Closed
• updated_on is older than 3 business days
• For each matching Incident, fire a custom event (e.g., incident.reminder).

Sample Script (in Scheduled Job):

(function() {
var gr = new GlideRecord("incident");
gr.addActiveQuery(); // exclude closed/canceled
gr.addQuery("sys_updated_on", "<=", gs.daysAgoStart(3)); // older than 3 days
gr.query();

while (gr.next()) {
// Track number of reminders already sent (custom integer field or sys_property)
var remindersSent = gr.u_reminder_count || 0;

if (remindersSent < 3) {
gs.eventQueue("incident.reminder", gr, gr.assigned_to.toString(), remindersSent + 1);
gr.u_reminder_count = remindersSent + 1; // custom field to count reminders
gr.update();
} else {
gs.eventQueue("incident.escalation_notify", gr, "", "");
}
}
})();