Status Update Templates

Customize and standardize your status updates

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

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Pricing Plan Availability

Status Update Templates are available to customers on our Business and Digital Operations 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

Users with the following roles can use a Status Update Template during incident response:

  • Responder
  • Manager
  • Global Admin
  • Account Owner

Create a Template

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Product Limit

You can add up to 100 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 Add Message section, enter your desired text in the Message field. This is the text that will appear in SMS, push and email status update notifications.
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Add Message

  1. In the Edit Email section, enter a Subject and use the rich text editor to make any customizations to the default email status update notification.
  2. Click Save.
    • Before saving, you can click Preview at any time to see what the message will look like in each notification channel.

Variables in Email Notifications

Email status update notifications can dynamically include information about the status update or incident.
While editing the email status update notification's content in the rich text editor:

  1. Place your cursor where you'd like the variable to appear.
  2. From the Insert Variables panel, select a variable.
  3. The variable will appear in the email body between double curly braces, e.g., {{ status_update.message }}.
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Status update message variable

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

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Search variables

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 variables 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

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.

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.
    • Adjustments in this field will also be reflected in the email body.
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Status Update Template

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

FAQ

What is the full list of supported variables?

Expand

The following table details the full list of variables you can use in your status update templates:

ObjectKeyExample Value
status_updatecreated_at2015-10-06T21:30:42Z
messageThis is a message that came from the status update UI.
senderidPXPGF42
html_urlhttps://subdomain.pagerduty.com/users/PXPGF42
nameEarline Greenholt
email[email protected]
descriptionI'm the boss
incidentidQ0U747RKFEV100
summary[#1234] The server is on fire.
html_urlhttps://subdomain.pagerduty.com/incidents/PT4KHLK
incident_number1234
created_at2015-10-06T21:30:42Z
statusacknowledged
titleThe server is on fire.
last_status_change_at2022-08-15T16:57:40Z
priority.nameP2
service.idPAW0B9L
service.summaryTechnical Service Name
service.html_urlhttps://subdomain.pagerduty.com/service-directory/PAW0B9L
teams[0].idPP2R1SK
teams[0].summary Billing Support
teams[0].html_urlhttps://subdomain.pagerduty.com/teams/PP2R1SK
last_status_change_by.idPAW0B9L
last_status_change_by.typeservice_reference
last_status_change_by.summary Technical Service Name
last_status_change_by.html_urlhttps://subdomain.pagerduty.com/service-directory/PAW0B9L
impacted_services.idPAW0B9L
impacted_services.summaryTechnical Service Name
impacted_services.html_urlhttps://subdomain.pagerduty.com/service-directory/PAW0B9L
acknowledgements[0].at2022-08-18T14:28:44Z
acknowledgements[0]. acknowledger.summaryEarline Greenholt
acknowledgements[0]. acknowledger.typeuser
acknowledgements[0]. acknowledger. html_url https://subdomain.pagerduty.com/users/PXPGF42
conference_bridge.conference_number*+1-415-555-1212,,,,1234#
conference_bridge.conference_url*https://example.com/123-456-789
slack_channel.nameSlack Channel Name
slack_channel.urlhttps://slack.com/app_redirect?channel=somechannel&team=someteam
impacted_business_services[0].idPD1234
impacted_business_services[0].summaryWeb API

* If an incident has its own conference bridge, this value will be shown. If not, and the conference bridge is configured at the service level, information for the service-level conference bridge will be shown. If no conference bridge information is available, this value will be empty.