Group options and settings

The Overview tab of the groups user interface allows you to configure group settings. From here you can define who is allowed to access and modify the group, which holiday calendar the group uses, and various options for how xMatters contacts group members.

To access these settings, you must have permission to view groups in the xMatters user interface (such as when you have the Group Supervisor role) and the group must be configured to allow one of your assigned roles to access the group. To modify a group's settings you must be a supervisor of the group.

Group options

The Overview tab allows you to modify group settings, including the group name and description, the group's holiday calendar, and other advanced settings that determine how xMatters notifies group members.

The group name and description identify the group in xMatters. Even though the group description is optional, providing a meaningful description can make it easier for message senders to target the correct group and for group members to understand why they belong to a group.

To change the group name and description:

  1. On the Groups tab, locate the group and click the group name. The group Overview tab is displayed.
  2. To edit the group name, click the group name and type a new name.
  3. To edit the group description, click the group description (or Enter a description) and type a new description.

Active groups are able to receive notifications. Inactive groups may be viewed and accessed in xMatters but do not receive notifications. You may want to set a group to be inactive while you initially configure it or if you want to temporarily disable the group without deleting it.

To set a group to be active (or inactive):

  1. On the Groups tab, locate the group and click the group name. The group Overview tab is displayed.
  2. In the Notifications area, select or clear the Active check box.

Inactive groups appear grayed-out and struck through in the web user interface.

The Allow Duplicates check box controls whether the member of a group can be added to the escalation timeline more than once, and whether group members can receive more than one notification for an alert (including members that may be targeted indirectly through their membership in another subgroup).

A user may be contacted more than once if they are a member of multiple groups (not subgroups) that are directly targeted for an alert.

The Inbox in xMatters and the mobile app display only one notification per alert, even if a user receives duplicate notifications for the same alert on their other device types.

Allow duplicates behavior with subgroups

When a group contains child group members, the allow duplicates setting of the parent group applies, regardless of how this setting is configured in the child group.

Consider the case where the Sales group does not allow duplicates, but its child group, Accounts, does allow duplicates. Bob Smith belongs to the Sales group twice, once directly as a member of the Sales group and once indirectly as a member of the Accounts group. When the sales group is targeted, Bob will receive only one notification because the Sales group does not allow duplicates, even though the Accounts group permits them.

To set a group to allow (or not allow) duplicates:

  1. On the Groups tab, locate the group and click its name to open the group's Overview tab.
  2. In the Notifications area, select or clear the Allow Duplicates check box.

Response actions can also be used to control the notification flow, by selecting to stop notifying a user or target once they have responded to an alert. Response behaviors can become complex for groups with nested subgroups. For more information about the response behavior of subgroups, see Response action examples.

This flag determines whether xMatters will contact a group member's failsafe (default) devices when they do not have any devices with active timeframes.

To set a group to use (or not use) failsafe devices:

  1. On the Groups tab, locate the group and click the group name. The group's Overview tab is displayed.
  2. In the Notifications area, select or clear the Use Failsafe Devices check box.

Groups use the holiday calendar from a specific site to determine which days are holidays.

Once you configure your group to use site holidays, review the schedule and ensure that you have configured the appropriate holiday coverage. By default, shifts are off-duty on holidays, so if you want group members to receive notifications on holidays create a holiday shift or modify an existing shift to have holiday coverage.

For more information about managing holidays for your group, see Schedule holiday shifts.

If your group does not use a holiday schedule then it does not require a site to use for holidays. In this case, holiday configuration settings do not appear in the user interface.

To set the site to use for holidays:
  1. Click the Overview tab.
  2. Under Advanced Options, in the Site To Use For Holidays drop-down list, select the site to use for holidays.

Group observers and supervisors

Group observers and group supervisors define who is able to view, notify, and modify the group.

Group observers can locate the group in searches and add it as a recipient to notifications. If a group observer has permission to view groups in xMatters they can also view the group's details from the Groups tab. They cannot modify the group unless they also supervise the group.

You define group observers by selecting the xMatters roles that are allowed to access the group. If a user is assigned any of the corresponding roles then they are able access and notify the group.

By default, new groups are configured to be observed by all roles. You may want to modify observers of sensitive groups to limit who is able to view group details and send notifications to the group; for example, you may want to allow all users to send notifications to the IT group but you may want to limit who can send notifications to the Company Executives group.

To configure group observers:

  1. Click the Groups tab.
  2. Locate the group you want to modify, and then click the group name.
  3. On the Overview page, click the Edit link next to Observers.

  1. On the Group Observers page, do one of the following: 
    1. Select the Observed By All check box to allow all roles to observe this group.
    2. Clear the Observed By All check box, and then select the roles that you want to be able to observe this group.
  2. Click Save.

Example

Imagine that the user Mary Jones has only the Standard User role. Like all other standard users, you want Mary to be able to notify the IT group and the HR group but you do not want her (or other standard users) to be able to send notifications to the Executives group.

To do this, configure the IT group and the HR group to have the Standard User role as a group observer. Ensure that the Executives group does not allow the Standard User role to be a group observer. Mary will then be able to contact the IT and HR groups but will not be able to see or contact the Executives group.

If another user with the Standard User role has been assigned additional roles, they may be able to access the Executives group if one of their other roles has permission to view the Executives group.

Group supervisors have permission to manage the group, including adding and removing group members, adjusting shifts, and defining the shift escalation timeline. The supervisor of a group can also locate the group in searches and add it as a recipient to notifications.

Group supervisors are often real-world supervisors who are responsible for managing their team's performance. When groups do not follow a real-world hierarchy (such as groups that are used to broadcast emergency messages to large numbers of people), a senior xMatters user such as a company supervisor is typically assigned to be the group supervisor.

If you do not define a group supervisor when you create a group, you become the group supervisor. You can later add and remove group supervisors. For an xMatters user to be a group supervisor, they must be able to access the Groups page in the user interface. This means that they must have the Group Supervisor role (or the appropriate customized permissions). Groups must have at least one supervisor.

Group supervisors do not automatically receive notifications sent to the groups they supervise. To inform a group supervisor about all messages sent to a group, add them to a 24x7 shift. Alternatively, you can use subscriptions to notify a group supervisor about specific alerts.  For more information about subscriptions, see Subscribe to alerts.

To add or remove a group supervisor:

  1. Click the Groups tab.
  2. Locate the group you want to modify, and then click the group name.
  3. On the Overview page, next to Supervisors, click the Edit link.

  1. Do one of the following:
    1. To add a supervisor, use the search bar to locate the name of the user you want to add, and then add them to the list. Only users with the correct permissions to be a supervisor will appear in the search results.
    2. To remove a supervisor, click the X next to their name. You cannot remove the last supervisor of a group.
  2. Click Save.

Services

The Services section displays the services the group owns and is responsible for and indicates if any of those services are currently impacted by an incident.

Click a service to display an info card with its name, description, active incidents, owner, and a link to view the service. If a service is undefined (not included in the Service Catalog), no additional information is included.

To view active incidents associated with a service:

The service info card includes a count of the number of active incidents currently impacting that service (incidents are considered active if their status is 'Open' or 'In Progress'). The incident icon (the flame icon) is color-coded by the highest severity of any active incidents impacting the service. In the example above, the service has 7 associated active incidents and the highest severity level of one or more of those incidents is 'Critical'. You can click the incident count to drill through to a filtered view of those incidents in the Incidents list.

Specifying which group owns a service helps incident commanders identify the right team to engage during an incident. You can manage the services a group owns directly from a group's Overview tab or from the Service Catalog.

To manage the services owned by a group:
  1. In the Services section of the Overview tab, click Edit.
  2. Do one of the following:
    • Add an existing service: Begin typing the name of the service in the search field and select it when it appears in the drop-down list, or type two spaces to see a list of all services you have permission to add. (Only unowned services can be added – any services owned by a group won't be displayed.)
    • Remove a service: Click the x icon next to the name of the service you want to remove from the group. This does not delete the service from the Service Catalog.
    • Add a new service: You can add services that aren't yet defined in the Service Catalog. To do this, type the name of the service and select Add as a new service. When the Add Service dialog box appears, confirm the name is correct, provide an optional description, and click Save.

  3. Click Save.