Most organizations have an appeals procedure in place that allows for the escalation of an appeal decision to a higher level. For example, if an appellant loses an appeal, he or she can request that a higher decision-making body overturn the decision reached for the previous appeal. To allow for the escalation of an appeal to a higher decision making body, each appeal process consists of one or more levels or stages. An appeal type is specified for each stage of appeal.
The organization may choose to implement an appeal process that uses two out of the three appeal types. For example, it may designate the first level of appeal to be a hearing appeal, the second level of appeal to be hearing review and not implement the judicial review appeal type at all. Furthermore, the same appeal type may be used at a number of appeal levels for an application, product or issue case. For example, the organization may decide to hold a hearing appeal as the first and second level of appeal. Additionally, the organization may decide that any type of appeal can be created at any level of appeal. The process of escalating an appeal to another stage is configurable and can be set on each product delivery, issue case or application integrated case using the Administration application.
One of the benefits of having different levels for appeals processing is that new evidence that was unavailable for one appeal can be presented at the next level of appeal and a relationship is established between the two appeals.