Apparatus and method for monitoring progress of customer generated trouble tickets

A method of operating a computer alerting system to evaluate pending trouble tickets, the method comprising:

• electronically evaluating, using the computer alerting system, the pending trouble tickets to determine whether each pending trouble ticket remains unresolved for a predetermined time corresponding to an escalation level;
• electronically requesting, using the computer alerting system, an alert be sent to a recipient assigned to the escalation level when it is determined that the pending trouble ticket remains unresolved for the predetermined time which exceeds a time threshold corresponding to the escalation level and the alert be sent to a customer having access to a system to which the trouble ticket relates;
• and
• electronically storing alert information, the alert information including at least the alert recipient for the escalation level, and ticket information specifying which pending trouble ticket is being evaluated.

A system for evaluating pending trouble tickets, the computerized system comprising:

• a memory device storing executable instructions therein;
• and
• a processing device, in response to the executable instructions, operative to:
• parse the pending trouble tickets to remove extraneous and invalid information;
• organize the data into data records according to a predefined format;
• evaluate the pending trouble tickets to determine whether each pending trouble ticket remains unresolved for a predetermined time corresponding to an escalation level;
• requests an alert be sent to a recipient, the recipient being assigned to an escalation level, when the pending trouble ticket remains unresolved for a time which exceeds a time threshold corresponding to the escalation level and the alert be sent to a customer having access to a system to which the trouble ticket relates.