Incident triggers

Examples of when to use this trigger: This step is primarily used when you want to initiate an incident within a custom incident management workflow.

What triggers it: When the associated flow trigger form is submitted. An Initiate Incident step must also be connected to the initiate incident trigger.

What information is in the outputs: Properties and parameters defined in the layout of the associated flow trigger form. The values at runtime depend on what's defined on the form layout and what's entered when the form is submitted.

1. Drag the Incident Initiation trigger from the palette onto the canvas. It is located under the Incidents section of the Triggers tab.
2. Double-click the trigger to open its configuration screen (or select it and click the pencil icon).
3. Select the form to use for initiating the flow and click Next.
   • You can also create a form from the trigger configuration screen if you don't have any existing flow trigger forms available to use, or if the available forms don't suit your needs. You can customize the new form's layout later.
   • You can't switch the form used by the step after you click Next; if you decide you want to target a different form, delete this instance of the step from the canvas and add a new incident initiation trigger.
   • The step takes its label from the associated form.
4. In the Flow Trigger Form section, click Customize Form to open the associated form's layout page in a new tab — you can customize the form there.
5. In the Enable Trigger section, choose whether to enable this trigger in the Web UI and Mobile App — this allows people to use the form to initiate an incident from the Incidents list and widget on the dashboard, the xMatters mobile app, and from within chat apps connected to xMatters.
   • Sender permissions and enabling the form can also be set on the associated form.
   • Enabling the form for mobile also controls if the form is available to initiate incidents from the xMatters bot in Slack and Microsoft Teams.
6. In the Permissions section, click Edit Permissions to allow additional users to submit the associated form.
   • You can select either users or roles; if you select a role, any users assigned that role can submit the form (for example, "Incident Managers"). If your flow includes a Create Alert Using a Form step, make sure you also set the same sender permissions on its associated messaging form, otherwise the flow might encounter errors at runtime.
7. Click the Flood Control tab to edit the trigger's default flood control settings. For more information about these settings, see Trigger Flood Control.
8. Click Done.

Examples of when to use this trigger:

• Automatically update a chat room to notify resolvers when an incident’s status is updated.
• Automatically update external applications to note when the incident's status is updated.
• Automatically close a ticket in external applications when an incident's status is changed to resolved in xMatters.
• Automatically send a new notification to resolvers when an incident's status has changed so appropriate action can be taken.

Status Change trigger outputs

1. Under the Initiate Incident step, click + Add Triggers.
   
2. Hover over Status Change and select the status level you want to create a flow for. You can select each level once, so when you add one of the available status change triggers to the canvas, it disappears from the list of options; when you remove it from the canvas, it reappears and is available for your use in future.

3. Once added, the Status Change triggers are displayed below the step and can be connected to separate flows.

Status Change triggers are displayed in a predefined order on the canvas (Open to Rejected), and below any connected Notify to Engage and Severity Change triggers.

Examples of when to use this trigger:

• Automatically update a chat room to notify resolvers when an incident’s severity is updated.
• Automatically update external applications to note when the incident's severity is updated.
• Automatically send a new notification to resolvers when an incident's severity has changed so teams can escalate or deescalate the incident response.

Severity Change trigger outputs

1. Under the Initiate Incident step, click + Add Triggers.
2. Hover over Severity Change and select the severity level you want to create a flow for. You can select each level once, so when you add one of the available severity change triggers to the canvas, it disappears from the list of options; when you remove it from the canvas, it reappears and is available for your use in future.

3. Once added, the selected Severity Change triggers are displayed below the step and can be connected to separate flows.
   

Severity Change triggers are displayed in a predefined order on the canvas (Critical to Minimal), below the Notify to Engage trigger and above any connected Status Change triggers.

When to use this trigger: To customize the design and content of the default messages sent to resolvers when they're notified to engage in an incident, or to trigger a custom flow when resolvers are notified to engage in an incident.

What triggers it: When someone selects 'Notify to Engage' and adds resolvers from the Resolvers section of the Incident Console, or when someone selects 'Notify to Engage' to notify a service owner from the service info card in the console or incident service dependencies map.

What information is in the outputs:

• Incident Trigger Context: Details of the incident from which the trigger was initiated. The values at runtime represent the state of the of the incident when the trigger was initiated.
• Outputs: Recipients selected in the form that's presented when someone selects 'Notify to Engage' for an incident

Notify to Engage outputs

1. On your Flow Designer canvas, click Add Triggers below an Initiate Incident step.
2. Select Notify to Engage.
   • The trigger is added to the canvas below the Initiate Incident step with a Create Alert step automatically attached to the trigger.
3. Double-click the Create Alert step (or select it and click the pencil icon) to edit the default Email / App, Text, and Voice messages that are sent to resolvers when they're notified to engage in the incident.
   • In the Setup tab, set the Incident Function field to 'Resolver Notification'.
4. Optionally, add additional steps before or after the Create Alert step.

Manually adding a Create Alert step from the palette and connecting it to your flow does not automatically populate the step's message content and settings. If you delete the Create Alert step that's created with the trigger, you can click 'Add Create Alert step' from the trigger's Setup tab to add a new one to your flow that includes the default messages.

While you do not need to include the Create Alert step in the flow attached to the Notify to Engage trigger, only recipients of a Create Alert step are added to the Resolvers section of the Incident Console – and those resolvers only display an 'Engaged' status when they respond to the message with a positive response option.

When to use this trigger: To customize the design and content of the default messages sent to stakeholders when they're updated about the incident, or to trigger a custom flow when an update is sent to stakeholders.

What triggers it: When someone sends an update to stakeholders about the incident. A stakeholder message can be sent by selecting the 'Notify stakeholders about this update' checkbox when changing the severity of an incident, or by clicking 'Send Update' on the Stakeholders section of the Incident Console. If you choose to associate a Flow Trigger form with the trigger, the default stakeholder message preview will be replaced with the flow trigger form layout.

What information is in the outputs:

• Incident Trigger Context: Details of the incident from which the trigger was initiated. The values at runtime represent the state of the of the incident when the trigger was initiated.
• Default outputs: The outputs of the trigger if there is no flow trigger form associated with it.

Stakeholder Update default outputs

1. On your Flow Designer canvas, click Add Triggers below an Initiate Incident step.
2. Select Stakeholder Update.
   • The trigger is added to the canvas below the Initiate Incident step with a Create Alert step automatically attached to the trigger.
3. Double-click the Stakeholder Update trigger to associate a flow trigger form with the trigger. Selecting a flow trigger form is optional. If you want to use the trigger's default outputs, leave the drop-down option as Use default stakeholder message details. If you select a form, the trigger's outputs will be replaced with the associated form's outputs.



4. Double-click the Create Alert step (or select it and click the pencil icon) to edit the default Email / App, Text, and Voice messages that are sent to stakeholders when they're updated about the incident.
   • In the Setup tab, set the Incident Function field to 'Stakeholder Update' to send the message to stakeholders. The recipients of the alert will be added as stakeholders in the incident's console.
5. Optionally, add additional steps before or after the Create Alert step.

Manually adding a Create Alert step from the palette and connecting it to your flow does not automatically populate the step's message content and settings. If you delete the Create Alert step that's created with the trigger, you can click 'Add Create Alert step' from the trigger's Setup tab to add a new one to your flow that includes the default messages.