Work item escalation and notifications to several levels

[Cristiana d'Agosto]

Hi all,
 
we are in 4.6c and the scenario described is for Leave Approval ie.
employee enters a leave request via ESS and the manager (1 Up) is the
immediate approver of the request.
 
In the current design for workflow, the result of any work item remaining
idle for 5 days is that the employee (initiator) receives a message to
notify him/her that no action has been taken by the manager. The new
requirement is that the manager at the next level (let's call it manager 2
up) will receive a notification of the outstanding work item after 5 days.
To ensure clear ownership of the approval process (I don't necessarly agree
with this), the work item itself will remain in the manager 1 up inbox only
ie. the manager 2 up is only notified that manager 1 up has not processed
the work item. If after a further 5 days the work item is still in the
manager 1 up inbox, a further notification will be sent to the manager 3 up
(!). The escalation of notifications will continue every 5 days until the
work item is processed or notification reaches the top of the org
structure.
 
I don't think this solution is good and I don't think it can be done. Have
you come accross such requirements before? Is it possible to do it? I am
still working on a way of convincing the client that this is not a good
solution. The way I see it you will just be sending heaps of
non-added-value mails to people that cannot process the work item anyway.
It is just a way of letting people know that someone is not doing their
jobs on the expected time frame.
 
Any ideas??
 
Thanks and regards
 
Cristiana
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