Service and Host Escalations Configuration

I am trying to set-up escalations.
I want this to cover all the hosts / services I have setup.
Basically after 3 notifications I want a second group to get notified.

I am trying to use a wild card and this seems to be causing the problem.
If I specify server names / service names it seems to work i.e. the restart check is okay and restarts service.

define serviceescalation{
host_name *
service_description *
contact_groups managers
first_notification 3
last_notification 9
notification_interval 90
}

did you try Host_groups instead? That would seem to be more manageable than * or even host_name specific.