With Add Responders you can request responders in addition to those who were originally assigned to an incident. Typical reasons for adding responders include SEV-1/P1 responses and mobilizing teams.

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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, with a limit of 500 unique responders and 1000 responder requests per incident. The requested users receive a notification, allowing them to accept or decline the request.

There are two ways to add responders to an incident:

• Manually add responders to an ongoing incident
• Automatically add responders with Incident Workflows

Manually Add Responders to an Ongoing Incident

A 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 ongoing, open incident:

1. Click the Title of the incident to view its details page and then click Add Responders.
2. In the field Start typing to search across Escalation Policies and Users, search and select the Escalation Policy and/or Users. You may optionally add a message or a conference bridge.
3. 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. In the field Additional Responders to Notify, search and select the Escalation Policies and/or Users.
3. 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, tap More in the lower right 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.

Note: You can add a conference bridge address in the initial request sent to responders.

Automatically Add Responders With Incident Workflows

Adding responders manually is a flexible way to choose the exact responders needed for a given situation. However, determining which users and escalation policies to include (often by referencing written documentation to see who fits the current incident at hand), and then selecting them one by one, expends valuable time and can be error-prone.

If you find yourself frequently mobilizing the same set of responders, you can define them ahead of time in an Incident Workflow to automate and accelerate the mobilization process. Then, during an incident, a user can run the appropriate play by choosing it from their list of available plays. Alternatively, a service can be configured to run an Incident Workflow when specific conditions are met.

Read more about each option:

• Create An Incident Workflow
• Automatically Running an Incident Workflow When a Condition is Met

Responder Notifications

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

Escalation Policy Responder Notifications

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Notification Behavior

When an escalation policy is requested as a responder, a user will only receive a single round of notifications, even if they are on multiple levels of the escalation policy.

When an escalation policy is requested 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 was selected while adding responders, the incident will continue to escalate according to the escalation policy associated with its service.

If a user is requested 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. 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 and 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.