Alert escalation and acknowledgement combined

We completed a new integration and after a lot of effort we discovered that the escalation "NEXT" performed the create but subsequently every n minutes a new ticket was created - the ACK also still needs to be performed.  Ideally, we would want the escalation to create the ticket and acknowledge the alert.  Perhaps the escalation then has a null destination until it clears (active alert) or some other method to avoid repetitive case creation?

 

I had a thread with Desh on support - no suggestions on a workaround.