📣 Beautiful Incident Timeline Pages

We are excited to release beautiful incident timeline pages that can be easily shared across the organization.

Why? Following along incidents can be noisy especially given the amount of collaboration required to debug the issue. Teams such as customer support are left wondering what is applicable to them and often causes confusion leading to more questions.

Incident timeline pages solve that by providing a high level overview of everything that is important that teams can easily follow along.

• Updates to the incident timeline page are pinned automatically with 📌 emoji in Slack
• Updates to timeline in the Web Platform automatically updates the incident timeline page
• Link can be easily shared across the organization to Rootly users
• Executive overview of all relevant information without scrolling around in Slack
• Accessible links in both the incident channel overview in Slack and incident view on the Web Platform

🌝 New & Improved

• 🆕 Send Slack Message and Slack Blocks task in workflows now can be sent as ephemeral (Only you can view)
• 🆕 Adding responders via Opsgenie and VictorOps now split into users and teams instead of combined for easier search
• 🆕 Custom field support for Asana integration
• 🆕 Ability to configure assignee for Asana integration
• 🆕 Stepped line chart support in metrics
• 🆕 Stacked charts support in metrics
• 🆕 API support for CRUD custom dashboards in metrics
• 💅 Reworked data model for Statuspage.io integration that will unlock ability to leverage templates and components
• 💅 PagerDuty integration better respects escalation policies and acknowledge events that is aligned with native PagerDuty
• 💅 Infrastructure improvements to better support concurrent incident creation for a single organization
• 💅 Action items in Web Platform grouped by their respective role, playbook, or other if applicable for easier categorization
• 💅 PagerDuty and Opsgenie alerts are automatically closed when an incident is resolved
• 🐛 Fixed issue where exporting metrics from specific charts as CSV and JSON did not work
• 🐛 Fixed issue where elapsed time on Web Platform was not updating without a refresh
• 🐛 Fixed issue in workflows if you set repeat every to 0 it causes an error

🧿 Manage Workflows via API, Terraform, & Pulumi

Rootly is the only enterprise-ready incident management platform that supports IaC via API, Terraform, and Pulumi.

Today, we are taking that one level further and enabling customers to manage workflows via API, Terraform, and Pulumi.

Workflows are at the heart of what makes Rootly able to be customized to encode each organizations individual incident processes.

Previously, managing these workflows (e.g. automatically create Jira ticket for on security board, invite infra team if SEV0, etc.) had to be done in our Web platform. This was manual and didn't align with how organizations were already leveraging IaC.

With the ability to now manage workflows through providers like Terraform, individual departments and teams can own workflow configuration without click-ops.

API

• Docs with workflows support: here
• Previous changelog release notes: here

Terraform

• Docs with workflows support: here
• Previous changelog release notes: here

Pulumi

• Docs with workflows support: here
• Previous changelog release notes: here

🌝 New & Improved

• 🆕 Scheduled maintenance can be created from Slack using /incident maintenance, previously only available on Web platform
• 🆕 Assigning action items to others easier in Slack by right clicking and selecting 👉 assign a user/team
• 💅 Improvements to make tasks associated with playbooks more robust
• 💅 General refactoring on our data model and configurations that improves overall loading and saving speeds
• 💅 Adding action items on Web platform no longer require a refresh to populate
• 🐛 Fixed issue where filters on alerts were not working for environments and services
• 🐛 Fixed issue where export to CSV and JSON did not specify the title of the custom field
• 🐛 Fixed issue where updating the organization page rendered a 500 despite data always being saved

📊 Customizable Incident Metrics

We are excited to launch the industries most powerful reliability and incident insights.

Previously, customers relied on a basic set of metrics that weren't editable. Now, customers can build beautiful custom dashboards and charts with data sliced the way they want. Think BI tools such as Tableau and Amplitude. Example use cases now enabled...

• Postmortems that haven't been published and exceed SLA
• High severity incidents with action items
• Custom field for customer impact
• Incidents with a Jira ticket and type was customer facing
• ...endless possibilities in our simple to use query and chart builder

Custom Dashboards

For a variety of reasons such as by engineering team, executive reporting, or type of insights, a single dashboard is not enough to serve all use cases.

• Create private dashboards only you can view (can be upgraded to public)
• Create public dashboards shared with the organization and team
• Drag and resize various charts on dashboard for a custom look and feel

Charts, Filters & Queries

• Build custom charts with multiple filter groups for granular reporting
• Leverage filters not only for incident metadata like severity but also integration attributes (e.g. Jira tickets, Datadog playbooks, Confluence pages)
• Use custom fields (e.g. customer impact) as an attribute
• Select from a variety of chart types (line, chart, bar, table, aggregate value, etc.)
• Custom label chart title and axis

Reporting & Exports

Making data driven decisions around reliability and where to invest resources have never been easier. Customers can now present to stakeholders various views depending on the audience type and focus.

• Executive summary (e.g. top line metrics and trends)
• Beautiful reports with full-screen presentation mode
• Audience specific reports

Keeping the garden walls low in Rootly is key priority as many will want to export incident data to existing BI or analytics tools. Export options include.

• API, CSV, JSON
• PNG, JPG
• PDF

Out of The Box

Although advanced and customizable, metrics out of the box are ready-to-go to get started quickly. Key data around MTTX, incident count, severity, service impact, and more fetched automatically. All wrapped in a beautiful UX. Teams of all sizes can take advantage of this!

GA for all customers on Rootly Enterprise to try! 🥳

🌝 New & Improved

• 🆕 Workflow task for Update Rootly Postmortem
• 🆕 API fields include Slack channels, aliases, and owners for services, functionalities, and teams
• 🆕 Workflow condition for any on top of all of, any of, and none of existing options
• 💅 Better deduplication when importing PagerDuty teams to Rootly
• 💅 Shiny new logos on https://rootly.com/
• 🐛 Fixed issue where guidance when assigned a role wasn't formatted correctly

📹 Microsoft Teams Integration

We are excited to announce our video conferencing integration with Microsoft Teams.

As we further our market leading position for enterprise readiness, organizations will now be able to collaborate over Teams for high bandwidth conversations as they tackle incidents.

• Create a Teams bridge automatically whenever an incident starts
• Automatically bookmark Teams bridge to incident channel for easy access
• Edit/replace Teams bridge link (e.g. if an existing one is already in use)
• Leverage workflows to dynamically create Teams bridge (e.g. only SEV0 and SEV1 require a call)

Our Teams integration sits alongside other video conferencing tools already supported such as Zoom, Google Meet, Slack Huddles, Webex, and more.

Docs for getting started: https://docs.rootly.com/integrations/microsoft-teams

🌝 New & Improved

• 🆕 Specify notification channel whenever a workflow fails to run, found in Profile > Organization Settings
• 🆕 Service dependencies inside of Rootly service catalog
• 🆕 Alerts (e.g. PagerDuty) that Rootly pipes into Slack can now be customized with specific messaging and CTA buttons (e.g. create incident, link to alert, etc.), found in Workflow > Alerts
• 🆕 Workflow triggers for custom fields (e.g. custom field updated, etc.)
• 🆕 Action items can be exported to PDF
• 🆕 Incident timestamps (acknowledged, detected, started, mitigated, resolved) can be used as a workflow condition (set or unset)
• 💅 Paging responders in Slack modal now separates escalation policies and users instead of combining
• 💅 UI polishes around workflows and tasks
• 💅 Infrastructure enhancements that makes bulk emailing and inviting users to Rootly better
• 💅 Migration from PagerDuty webhook v2 to v3, enables additional event types around signal changes to incident severity, responders, and all around better sync between the two
• 💅 Alerts tab added to main navigation menu in Web platform and Pulses is now nested under configuration
• 🐛 Fixed issue where some users were prompted to reintegrate PagerDuty
• 🐛 Fixed issue where workflow conditions for action items could run into a race condition
• 🐛 Fixed issue where elapsed time in Slack did not update
• 🐛 Fixed issue where clicking on an related active incident in Web platform did not redirect you to active incident channel

🔑 Microsoft Azure AD (Active Directory) SSO Integration

We are excited to be featured in the official Microsoft Azure AD application marketplace!

The vast majority of our customers leverage SSO and Rootly already, the most popular being Okta, Google, and Azure AD.

With continued support for Azure AD, enterprises can securely manage access to Rootly seamlessly.

• Control in Azure AD who has access to Rootly
• Enable your users to be automatically signed-in to Rootly with their Azure AD accounts
• Manage your accounts in one central location - the Azure portal
• Take advantage of SCIM

Getting started with Rootly and Azure AD, written by Microsoft: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/saas-apps/rootly-tutorial

🌝 New & Improved

• 🆕 Shiny G2 badges for High Performer and Easiest To Do Business With for Summer 2022 on homepage 🥳
• 🆕 Workflow task for updating an already created Google Calendar event (e.g. add more attendees programmatically to postmortem review meetings)
• 💅 Google Calendar workflow task allows for modifying guest permissions (e.g. visibility of event, ability to invite others, ability to modify event)
• 💅 Improved filter loading speed on Web platform
• 💅 Improved filter UI with tasteful colours for easier navigation
• 💅 More granular time settings for Google Calendar task (e.g. timezone support, wait time for skipping weekends)
• 💅 Incident timeline loads 50 items instead of 10
• 💅 14-day free trial more accessible on homepage
• 🐛 Fixed issue where emails after signing up for a trial were too noisy
• 🐛 Fixed issue where there was a typo under incident type configuration
• 🐛 Fixed issue where there was an UI bug for marking incidents as test on Web platform looked required

🏟️ Backstage Integration - Service Catalog

We are excited to announce our Backstage integration on the Backstage Plugin Marketplace.

Backstage is a popular service catalog tool open sourced by Spotify and is used by companies such as Netflix, DoorDash, Hello Fresh, and 100's of others including many of our customers.

We continue to reduce the fragmentation of tooling by building the most pluggable enterprise-ready incident management platform on the market.

Customers can substitute their Rootly service catalog with their existing Backstage implementation and seamlessly ensure both platforms remain in sync.

Features

• Easy to install by leveraging the official Rootly + Backstage plugin: https://backstage.io/plugins
• Import services created and managed in Backstage directly to Rootly
• Create incidents in Rootly that pull from service impact directly from Backstage
• Double click on services in Backstage and browse their respective incident history depending on what was impacted in Rootly
• Browse incident metadata as granular as per service in Backstage such as severity, reporter, status, start/end time, etc.
• Shortcut to create incidents in Rootly via Backstage for easy access
• View on-going Rootly incidents in Backstage for broader visibility

In Action

Getting started guide: https://docs.rootly.com/integrations/backstage

🌝 New & Improved

• 🆕 Workflows for postmortem with status conditions (Draft, Published)
• 🆕 Incident variables for roles such as {{ incident.commander }}
• 🆕 Custom Fields now show up in Metrics
• 🆕 Option to cancel queued Workflows
• 🆕 Workflow task for Send Slack Message now includes the ability to add an action button for Esclating an incident
• 🆕 Versioning for Rootly postmortem templates
• 🆕 ServiceNow supports custom fields mapping of incident metadata
• 🆕 Workflow task for Sending Slack Message available under Action Item workflows
• 💅 Ability to handle organizations with thousands of GitHub repositories for efficiently
• 💅 Schedule Postmortem Meeting task can now exclude weekends
• 💅 Workflow template for renaming a Slack Channel to a Jira ticket number
• 💅 Ability to export metrics to PDF
• 💅 PagerDuty and Opsgenie paging tasks in Workflows can now auto-match or select priority levels
• 💅 Additional Workflow triggers such around creation and update of Postmortem and Causes
• 🐛 Fixed issue where test/training incidents were appearing on the Rootly dashboard and summary emails
• 🐛 Fixed issue on UI where pop-up modules rendered without the background

🎟️ Linear Integration

It's no secret that Rootly has a powerful integration with Linear and is leveraged by customers already.

Today, we are formally launching in partnership with Linear on their integrations marketplace.

Customers will be able to automatically create and track tickets such as incident action items in Linear and ensure they bi-directionally sync. This can all be done from within Slack or Web.

• Create a Linear issue when a new incident is created with relevant metadata
• Create a Linear sub-issue when a new action item is created
• Update an issue ticket to Done when an incident is resolved

Features

• Full customization and configuration via Workflows
• Automate routing different Linear tickets to different boards depending on incident severity, type, team, or any other condition
• Automatically sync incident severity with Linear priorities
• Leverage incident variables to populate to customize ticket description, title, etc.

In Action

🌝 New & Improved

• 🆕 Add custom message when paging via Workflows to help provide more context, incident variables are also supported
• 🆕 Shortcut buttons pop up with common tasks in Rootly during long periods of inactivity to prompt if you need help, can be configured further in Workflows
• 🆕 Role-based incident variables (e.g. Send Slack message to Incident Commander)
• 🆕 Custom fields (e.g. customer impact) show up in Slack as part of the incident overview and is easily editable
• 💅 Search and filtering capabilities to services and functionalities attribute in the Rootly API
• 💅 Additional guidance for modifying custom wizard fields on Slack and Web
• 💅 Action items view on Web by default exclude tasks and focuses on follow-up actions
• 💅 UX improvements to incident summary in the Slack incident overview section to make it easier to digest
• 💅 Error message when running a Slack command in an incident channel but that incident has been already deleted on Web
• 💅 /incident help UX improvement to make finding and learning commands easier, does not require clicking into each one
• 🐛 Fixed issue where date picker did not allow today to be set
• 🐛 Fixed issue where assigning an action item to team did not immediately reflect in Slack
• 🐛 Fixed issue where playbooks did not populate their respective checklist of tasks when incident was updated

🗄 Workflow Versioning

Introducing Workflow Versioning, a detailed audit trail and history of all changes made to a given Workflow.

Workflows are at the heart of Rootly. By making it easier to track changes made over time, teams will find Workflows even easier to manage and safely collaborate together than it already is.

Why? Previously, there was little to no visibility who made the change or what they were. Now there is a mechanism to quickly see what changes were made without needing to recall from memory and compare each Workflow attribute.

• Visually pleasing so at a glance changes from one version to another are obvious (e.g. colour coding)
• Version numbers and date changed
• User that executed the change
• The changes themselves track both past to present differences for all Workflow attributes (e.g. trigger, condition, task, etc.)

Existing customers can access this feature by heading into Rootly > Workflows > Clicking on any Workflow name > Versions.

🌝 New & Improved

• 🆕 Display in incident timeline all users that join the incident channel regardless if they're a Rootly user
• 🆕 Ability to filter by incident attributes in Rootly API
• 💅 External postmortems on Confluence, Google Doc, Notion, and others display follow-up action items only, excluding tasks
• 💅 Fresh coat of paint for https://rootly.com/demo with accessible links to G2 customer reviews
• 💅 Naming for Rootly Incident Page is now aligned across both Web and Slack
• 💅 Ability to delete Rootly generated postmortems
• 🐛 Fixed issue where custom Workflow trigger commands in Slack weren't working
• 🐛 Fixed issue where UI on Confluence and Google Doc postmortems had incorrect line spacing
• 🐛 Fixed issue where occasionally private incidents were accessible via postmortem view
• 🐛 Fixed issue where running /incident convert did not let you pin events to the incident timeline

✍️ Incident Feedback

Like organizations, your incident response process will evolve over time. We are making learning from incidents your superpower by closing the feedback loop.

Excited to announce the ability to collect incident feedback and data on the incident process. This will help reveal what is working and areas of improvement (e.g. communication).

Purposely designed to be accessible, feedback can be collected in Web or Slack, by default responders are automatically prompted when incident is mitigated/resolved or by running /incident feedback.

Benefits

• Fresh and accurate - gather feedback while still fresh and relevant instead of relying on postmortem review meetings a week late or manual surveys
• Data - incidents scored on satisfaction and given an average ⭐ rating and text field for long form responses
• Sample size - gather feedback from all incident responders and from those that would be less likely to voice their feedback for a holistic picture
• Flexible - can use Workflows to modify feedback prompt timing and instructional text
• Psychological safety - incident responders can submit feedback anonymously

🌝 New & Improved

• 🆕 Can define default roles for new users that join Rootly (e.g. Admin, Users, Observer, Commander, any custom created) in organization settings
• 🆕 Custom fields can be toggled on/off
• 🆕 Custom fields in Slack can be updated at any time and can be managed separately
• 🆕 Slack bots (including homegrown) other than Rootly can be automatically invited to incident channels just like responders
• 🆕 PagerDuty alerts Rootly pipes into Slack now include a link to PagerDuty for reference
• 🆕 Workflows can specify which days of the week to run (e.g. work days only M-F)
• 🆕 Workflow for updating Google Doc postmortem
• 💅 API Reference revamp using Stoplight: https://rootly.com/api
• 💅 If pinning a Slack message to incident timeline fails, we provide a helpful error message
• 💅 Loading speed improvements in Slack when drop-down lists are long
• 💅 Notion task in Workflows now have the ability to select pre-canned postmortem templates in Rootly
• 💅 Custom fields now display in Notion generated postmortems
• 💅 Slack buttons in incident channels are shortened to reduce visual clutter
• 💅 All new Rootly accounts by default post incident updates in threads instead of broadcasting to channel
• 💅 Workflows are categorized by enabled and disabled
• 🐛 Fixed issue where on rare occasions duplicate incidents were being created
  

⏲️ Retroactively Create Incidents and Modify Timestamps

Declaring an incident the moment it actually starts may not always be possible. Sometimes we notice incidents hours or days later. This causes skewed timestamps that paint an inaccurate metrics picture.

We are announcing the ability to retroactively create incidents and modifying all timestamps (started, detected, acknowledged, mitigated, resolved).

Easily backfill past incidents and accurately reflect actual start and resolved times.

• Available at incident creation on Web and Slack as "Change start time" field
• User timezones displayed when selecting new date and time
• Modifying timestamps available on Web (per incident) and Slack (/incident timestamp), accessible at anytime of the incident
• Built in guardrails to prevent e.g. Resolved occurs before Started
• Metrics automatically get updated

🌝 New & Improved

• 🆕 Export incident timeline to CSV, JSON, XML format (found at the bottom of your timeline)
• 🆕 Creating new incidents now showcase ongoing incidents to ensure duplicates are not created in both Web and Slack
• 💅 Workflow task for Jira now supports Due date attribute
• 💅 Infrastructure enhancements as our customer base continues to rapid grow
• 💅 Placeholder text in Web provide better guidance when you haven't created your first incident or postmortem
• 💅 Workflow task for Shortcut can now map to assignee
• 🐛 Fixed issue where marking an action item as canceled in Slack did not accurately reflect the number of open items