Task Escalations - How can I configure an escalation to fire only if an user has

Option1: Once the user did not accept the task, the task can be escalated based on the timer. Escalation mail can be sent or the same task can be reassigned.
Option 2: if the task is not accepted for a given amount of time, the task can be skipped by having an exception flow and ur logic can be triggered from there.

@bharath - I dont see an option to trigger an email from an exception

This seems to be a common use case, anything obvious that I am missing?

For Escalation, we can send a n alert message. For exception, we need to have a send email node in the exception flow to trigger the email notification

once you add an exception, you will see a special icon on the task in the designer. use connector from this icon instead of task itself to specify and connect the rest of exception flow.

Whenever there is an active task, you have a task assigned to someone, in this case the task have a task assignee and not a task owner. So in your case, if someone has not accepted a task within a certain amount of time(lets say 5 hours). You can set a timer in a constant for5 hours and once you save it, the escalation have other options like reassignment and send alert. If you want to send an alert to the user who is a task assignee right now, you can put that as a condition on the recipient box like this : "if(isnull(tp!owner),tp!assignee,{})" . This condition will check to see for task owner and if the task do not have a task owner it will send an alert to task assignee. You can configure the subject line and email body accordingly.