The Add Responders feature lets you bring additional users or escalation policies into an incident response, beyond those initially assigned. Whether you're 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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Note

This feature is available on Business, Enterprise for Incident Management and Digital Operations (Legacy) plans. Please contact our Sales Team if you would like to upgrade to a plan featuring Add Responders.

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Best Practice

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

Add Responders to an Incident

You can request individual users or escalation policies as responders.The requested users receive a notification, allowing 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
• Automatically add responders with Incident Workflows

Manually Add Responders to an Open Incident

Any user who can take action on the open incident can add responders within the web app and mobile app.

In the Web App

On an open incident:

1. Click the Title of the incident to view its details page and then click Add Responders.
2. In the field Search for an Escalation Policy or User, search and select your preferred Escalation Policy(ies) and/or User(s). You can use tags to help filter the results.
3. You may optionally add a message or a conference bridge.
4. Click Save.

When manually triggering an incident:

1. On the Incidents page or a service’s Activity page, click New Incident in the top right.
2. Fill in the appropriate incident details, and then select the Advanced Options dropdown towards the bottom of the screen.
3. In the field Add additional responders to help, search and select the Escalation Policy(ies) and/or User(s).
4. When you have entered all necessary information for the incident, click Create Incident.

In the Mobile App

iOS:

1. In an open incident, tap next to Responders, or tap More and select Add Responder.
2. Next, select the name of the responder or escalation policy you would like to add, add an optional message, and tap Notify.

Android:

1. In an open incident, you can add responders from two locations:
   • From the actions carousel menu in the Triage tab, scroll horizontally to the left and then tap Add Responder
   • Tap All Actions from the bottom left and then tap Add Responder2. Next, select the name of the user(s) or escalation policy(ies) you would like to add, add an optional message, and then tap Notify.Note: You can add a conference bridge address in the message field.

Automatically Add Responders With Incident Workflows

Manually adding responders gives you the flexibility to select exactly who’s 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 prone to error.

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:

• Create An Incident Workflow
• Run an Incident Workflow When a Condition is Met

Responder Notifications

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

Escalation Policy Responder Notifications

When you request an escalation policy as a responder, it will follow the escalation path until someone accepts the request to join, or the incident resolves. Please note, however, that 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 a user as a responder and they acknowledge the incident, their responder request is automatically accepted, too. A similar thing happens when a user bulk-acknowledges more than one incident at a time. For example, if a user selects five incidents to bulk-acknowledge and has pending responder requests on three of those five incidents, the bulk update will auto-accept the three responder 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 bearing the heading 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.