Managing Incidents Across Multiple Services

Previously, only maintenance events were allowed to be configured as an event notification across multiple services in StatusHub. Our latest update provides the ability to configure and manage multi-service incident events as well. Naturally, maintenance and incident events can potentially occur on or affect multiple services and we want to support this customer need.

This article explains how to configure and manage multi-service incident events for unexpected downtime in StatusHub. Let’s begin!

Creating Incident Events for Multiple Services

To create a multi-service incident, first click on the Add Incident (Triangle with Exclamation Point) option on your status page for the appropriate hub.

Next, you will need to add the details of your incident event. This includes the following:

• Title - Click on the field and enter a title for the incident event. Note: You may also click on the Page Icon to choose a template, which will fill in the form with the template’s information. See Incident Templates to learn more.

• Start Time - Select a Date and Time for the event to start.

• Message - Click on the text field and enter a message to be provided to viewers.

• Incident Status - Choose the current status of the incident event (Investigating, Identifying, or Monitoring).

The next step will to be to add the groups of services or individual services that will be affected by this incident event. Click on Add Services to make a selection:

In many cases one problem will often affect other services and this option allows you to keep everyone informed. You may choose all services for one or more groups, a single group, or individual services belonging to different groups. The individual statuses may then be configured for each service.

In the example below, services within the Services Group are displayed as selectable options. For this example, two of the four services will be chosen: Company Website and Database & Servers.

After the services have been selected, three status radios will appear to the left of the service name to allow you to set the status per service. By default, they will be set to the first selection (green).

To set the individual status for a service, click on the appropriate option to the left of the service name. In the example below, the Company Website has been set to “Service Disruption” and Database & Servers has been set to “Performance Issues”. For this example, the company website is dependent on a database or server issue that the team is currently investigating and has experienced a service disruption.

An option is also provided for electing to “not send notifications to subscribers”. We refer to this as silent mode. It is disabled by default and you may check the box for this option to enable it. When enabled, subscribers will NOT receive a notification regarding this incident event.

Once finished, click Create Incident to complete the process. You may also click on Cancel to exit this form without creating the incident.

The statuses of the selected services will appear within the status page for the StatusHub, as shown below. The icon color is determined by the status chosen when setting up the incident: investigating, identified, monitoring, and resolved.

In the example below, the icon is “red” to show that the problem is being investigated. An icon will be displayed for each incident assigned to a given service within a group.

Modifying Incident Events

Once the incident has been created for the required services or groups of services, you will be able to update this event from the StatusHub control panel. This includes changing the status of assigned services, adding new services, and removing them as needed. Click on the Triangle Icon for the appropriate service and incident event within the status page.

Please note that when more than one incident event has been entered, multiple icons will be present. In this example, only one is displayed next to the affected services and is displayed in “red” to show that the problem is being investigated.

The Update Incident form will be provided for altering the details of the chosen incident event. Here you may update the Start Time, Message, and Incident Status.

Updating Service Statuses

Next, you may update the status of a service by clicking on the appropriate status radio (from left to right):

• Running
• Performance Issues
• Service Disrupted

Once finished, click Update to save your changes. In the example below, the status of Database & Servers has been changed to green to show the problem is resolved. The status of Company Website has been changed to “Performance Issues” to show that the website is still having a problem.

Adding More Services

To add another service or group of services, click on Add Services located near the bottom of the Update Incident form. Select the desired service or group of services by clicking on its name in the provided list.

The selected service will be added and it’s status will need to be configured. Click on the appropriate radio to configure the service status and then click Update to finish. For this example, a 3rd Party Website has been added and the status has been set to “Service Disruption”.

We hope this article has been helpful when it comes to creating and managing multi-service incident events! As always, feel free to contact support for additional assistance.