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When the next incident hits, your team should feel prepared. With Incident Roles, you can quickly and efficiently assign responsibilities to your team and define the hierarchy of command. A swift response will help reduce the impact. By adding descriptions and tasks ahead of time, you can ensure your team knows exactly what to do.

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Built-in Roles

Rootly comes with four roles we consider essential for effective incident response. Commander The individual responsible for the overall management of the incident from start to finish. Delegation of tasks across the response team and final decision-making authority. Communications lead The individual responsible for managing internal and external communications to stakeholders outside of the response team. Executive Sponsor The individual responsible for complex decision making, often used for high-severity or sensitive incidents. Retrospective Owner The individual responsible for driving the post-incident retrospective process to completion.

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Add an Incident Role

1
Go to Configuration > Roles.
2
Select + New Role.
3
Add a name, description, and a list of responsibilities for the role.
ExampleName: CommanderDescription: The person who takes charge of the incident, assigns tasks, and has the deciding vote on proceeding.Responsibilities:
  • Declare and classify the severity of the incident in Rootly
  • Assign roles (e.g., Communications Lead, Subject Matter Experts)
  • Lead regular status updates in the Slack incident channel
  • Escalate to executives or external teams if needed
  • Make “go/no-go” decisions on customer communications and mitigation steps
Toggle “make this role optional” if it’s not required for every incident.
4
Switch to the Advanced settings tab to adjust the incident permission set and “allow multiple users” to be assigned this role.
5
Select Create Role to continue. Tasks can be added after a role has been created.

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Add tasks to an Incident Role

1
Go to Configuration > Roles.
2
Find the role you want to add tasks to in the table. Click the pencil icon on the left side to edit.
3
Switch to the Tasks tab to see existing tasks. Click + Add Task.
4
Add a name (required) and description. Set the Priority to low, medium, or high.
5
Click Add to save.
ExampleName (required): Declare and classify the severity of the incident in RootlyDescription: Review the incident alerts, customer reports, and system status to assign an incident severity.Priority: High

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Edit an Incident Role

1
Go to Configuration > Roles.
2
Find the role you want to edit in the table. Click the pencil icon on the left side to edit.There are three tabs:Basics
  • ID (auto-generated by Rootly)
  • Name
  • Description
  • Responsibilities
  • “Make this role optional” checkbox
Tasks
  • Manage existing tasks
  • Add new tasks
Advanced
  • Incident permissions set
  • “Allow multiple users to be assigned this role” toggle
3
Once the desired edits are complete, click Update to save.

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Delete an Incident Role

1
Go to Configuration > Roles.
2
Find the role you want to edit in the table. Click the trashcan icon on the left side to delete.
3
Deleting an incident role will also remove its associated data. This can’t be undone. Select Delete to delete the role and all associated data, or click Discard changes to keep the role.

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Get Help

For help, use the slash command /rootly help in Slack or email [email protected].