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Add Responders

Add responders to open incidents to receive additional assistance

The Add Responders feature allows adding additional users or escalation policies to an incident, beyond those initially assigned. Whether you are managing a SEV-1/P1 incident or rapidly assembling a response team, this capability ensures you can quickly mobilize the right resources. Add users manually for flexibility, or automatically with preset groupings via Incident Workflows.

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Availability

This feature is available on Business, Enterprise for Incident Management and Digital Operations (Legacy) plans. Contact the Sales Team to upgrade to a plan that includes Add Responders.

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Best Practice

For an in-depth look at how adding responders can improve your organization's processes, refer to the Incident Response best practice guide.

Add Responders to an Incident

You can request individual users or escalation policies as responders. Requested users receive a notification that allows them to accept or decline the request.

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Limits Per Incident

There is a limit of 500 unique responders and 1000 responder requests per incident.

There are two ways to add responders to an incident:

Manually Add Responders to an Open Incident

Any user who can take action on an open incident can add responders in the web and mobile apps.

Manually Add Responders Using Web App

On an open incident:

  1. Click the incident title to view its details page.
  2. Click Add Responders in the right-hand pane.
  3. In the Search for an Escalation Policy or User field, select your preferred Escalation Policy(ies) and/or User(s). You can use tags to help filter the results.
  4. (Optional) Add a message or a conference bridge.
  5. Click Save.

When manually triggering an incident:

  1. On the Incidents page or a service’s Activity page, click the New Incident button.
  2. Fill in the appropriate incident details.
  3. Select the Advanced Options dropdown.
  4. In the field Add additional responders to help, select the Escalation Policy(ies) and/or User(s).
  5. Click Create Incident.
Manually Add Responders Using Mobile App
  1. In an open incident, you can add responders from either:
    • The actions carousel menu in the Triage tab by tapping Add Responder
    • The All Actions menu by tapping Add Responder.
  2. Select user(s) or escalation policy(ies) to add and include an optional message.
    Note: You can add a conference bridge address in the message field.
  3. Tap Notify.

Automatically Add Responders With Incident Workflows

Manually adding responders gives you the flexibility to select exactly who is needed for a specific incident. However, identifying the right responders—often by consulting documentation—and adding them one by one can be time-consuming and error-prone.

If you regularly involve the same set of responders, you may want to consider streamlining the process with Incident Workflows. You can predefine responder groups and automate their mobilization. During an incident, users can trigger the appropriate workflow from a list of plays, or you can configure services to launch workflows automatically when certain conditions are met.

Read more about each option:

Responder Notifications

Responder notifications prompt users to accept or decline an invitation to join an incident. When you request a user to join as a responder, they will receive notifications that match their high-urgency notification rules.

Escalation Policy Responder Notifications

When you request an escalation policy as a responder, it sends responder invites to every user currently on call at each escalation policy level until someone accepts the invitation to join, or the incident resolves. However, regardless of which escalation policy you selected while adding responders, the incident will continue to escalate according to the escalation policy associated with its service.

If you request that a user join as a responder and they acknowledge the incident, their responder request is automatically accepted as well. A similar action occurs when a user bulk-acknowledges multiple incidents at once. For example, if a user selects five incidents to bulk-acknowledge and has pending responder requests on three of them, the bulk update automatically accepts those three requests.

Status of Responders

To view the status of all requested responders for an incident, navigate to the incident’s details section in the web app by clicking the incident title. On the right-hand side of the incident, there is a list of responders and icons indicating their status. There are three possible responder statuses:

  • Joined if the requested responder accepted the request.
  • Declined if they declined the request.
  • Pending if they have yet to respond.

In the mobile app, an incident labelled Coordinated Response indicates that a user requested assistance from one or more responders.

The incident timeline also shows whether a responder has accepted or declined a request.

Updated 4 days ago

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