Status Update Templates simplify and standardize incident status communications. Free up time during incident response and keep stakeholders informed with consistent details and context.

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Availability

Status Update Templates are available to customers on our Business, Enterprise for Incident Management and Digital Operations (Legacy) plans. Please contact our Sales Team if you would like to upgrade to a plan with this feature.

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Required User Permissions

Users with the following roles can create and edit Status Update Templates:

• Manager
• Global Admin
• Account Owner

All users can use a Status Update Template during incident response.

Create a Template

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Product Limit

You can add up to 500 templates to your account.

1. In the web app, navigate to Incidents Status Update Templates.
2. Click New Template.
3. Enter a Name, an optional Description for the template, and click Create Template.
4. In the Message template section, enter your desired text in the Message field. This is the text that will appear in push, email, and SMS status update notifications.

5. In the Email template section, enter a Subject and use the rich text editor to make any customizations to the default email status update notification in the Body.
   • Please see the Fields in Email Notifications section for more information about including dynamic content in email status update notifications.
6. Click Save.
   • Before saving, you can click Preview in the top-right at any time to see what the message will look like in each notification channel.

Fields in Email Notifications

Email status update notifications can dynamically include information about the status update or incident. You can select standard fields and Custom Fields.

While editing the email status update notification's content in the rich text editor:

1. In the Fields panel on the right, click to the right of the field you'd like to insert. This will copy the field to your clipboard.
2. Paste the field into the appropriate place in the email template.
3. The field will appear in the email body between double curly braces, e.g., {{ status_update.message }}.

The most common fields are listed by default, however you may also enter a term to search for a more complete list of objects and their associated attributes. Please refer to the FAQ below full list of supported fields.

Support for Liquid

If you'd like to create conditional communications, Status Update Templates support the Liquid templating language in all configurable fields: Message, and email Subject and Body.

When referring to fields inside a Liquid tag, please omit the double curly braces, {{ ... }}. For example, the following snippet will transform the incident title to uppercase for incidents with a "P1" priority, and otherwise leave it unchanged:

{% if incident.priority.name == "P1" %}
  {{ incident.title | upcase }}{% else %}{{ incident.title}}
{% endif %}

Please note the following Liquid tags are not supported:

• tablerow
• liquid
• echo
• render
• include

Fields with Multiple Values

Depending on where an incident is in its lifecycle, it is possible for the following fields to contain more than one value (i.e., in an array):

• Status Updates, incident.previous_status_updates
• Impacted Business Services, incident.impacted_business_services
• Impacted Technical Services, incident.impacted_services
• Acknowledgements, incident.acknowledgements
• Assignments, incident.assignments
• Teams, incident.teams

Since these items are stored in an array, you'll need to provide an index to access their properties' values. For example, {{incident.previous_status_updates[0].message}} will display the first status update associated with the incident.

It may be more helpful, though, to use a for loop to display all values stored in an array. The following example iterates through all status updates associated with an incident:

{% for update in incident.previous_status_updates %}
  {{update.message}}
{% endfor %}

Additionally, you can access more than one of the properties associated with the update variable. For example, you may wish to include a status update's time with the message:

{% for update in incident.previous_status_updates %}
  {{update.created_at}} — {{update.message}}
{% endfor %}

Lastly, say you would like to only display the most recent status update, and the time it was created. Status updates are sorted by date and time in descending order, so you could use Liquid's first syntax to display only most recent update:

{% assign update = incident.previous_status_updates | first %}
{{update.created_at}} — {{update.message}}

For further functionality, please refer to the Liquid templating language's documentation.

Edit a Template

1. In the web app, navigate to Incidents Status Update Templates.
2. From the list of templates, click Edit to the right of the template you wish to edit.
3. Make your desired changes to the template.
4. Click Save.

Duplicate a Template

1. In the web app, navigate to Incidents Status Update Templates.
2. From the list of templates, click Duplicate to the right of the template you wish to duplicate.
3. Give the template a new Name and Description.
4. Click Duplicate Template.

Delete a Template

1. In the web app, navigate to Incidents Status Update Templates.
2. From the list of templates, click Delete to the right of the template you wish to delete.
3. In the confirmation modal, click Delete. This action is irreversible and cannot be undone.

Use a Status Update Template During Incident Response

1. Navigate to an incident's detail page and select the Status Updates tab.
2. Click New Update.
3. From the dropdown, select a communication template and click Preview.
4. Optional: If needed, adjust the pre-populated text in the field Add update message.
   • Note: Adjustments in this field will also be reflected in the email body.

5. When you’re satisfied with the status update’s content, click Send Message to notify incident subscribers.

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Requirement

The email Subject has a maximum of 255 characters. A status update notification containing more than the maximum character length will return the following error message:

There is a problem with this template. Please report this problem to your account administrator.

If this occurs, you can click Edit Email to adjust the Subject.

FAQ

What is the full list of supported fields?