Traditionally, Rootly has always relied on workflow configurations to automate Slack actions. While it offered the flexibility required to meet complex incident response procedures, it did require some initial effort to set up. Understanding that not all customers adopt super complex procedures, we've introduced Smart Defaults to our Slack integration to help simplify the configuration process.

To get started with Slack Smart Defaults, you'll want to first navigate to Integrations > Slack (Configuration).

The first item to set up is the workspace in which incident channels will be created into. In most cases you will only have one workspace to choose from. For customers on Slack Enterprise Grid, you could potentially see multiple workspace options.

The selected workspace also dictates the Slack users, groups, and channels we'll be able to retrieve in their respective dropdown menus.

There are two categories of settings you can set up Smart Defaults for. The first one being notifications.

Team notifications will help notify Slack users, groups, and/or channels of new incidents.

This flag will allow you to announce every new incident in a specified channel. The available channels are pulled from the workspace specified above.

This flag will allow you to notify users, groups, or channels of incidents that have been marked as a high severity.

Smart reminders will send out reminder messages in the specific incident channel when the conditions are met.

This flag allows you to notify the incident channel if no incident roles are assigned for x amount of time. It is important to assign incident roles to ensure ownership of the incident.

This flag allows you to notify the incident channel if the incident remains in the Triage state for x amount of time. Issues should be triaged as soon as they are detected to ensure prompt response. Click here to learn more about different states of an incident.

This flag allows you to notify the incident channel if the incident remains inactive for x amount of time. Incident activity is tracked by interactions with the Rootly Slack Bot within the specific incident channel. For example:

This flag allows you to notify the incident channel if the incident summary field is left empty for x amount of time. It is important to update the incident summary so subscribers added to the incident knows where the incident currently stands.

This flag allows you to notify the incident channel every x amount of time to remind users to update the status page. It is good practice to keep status pages up-to-date so your audience knows the status of certain incidents or services.

This flag allows you to notify the incident channel to log feedback once the incident is resolved. The feedback collected is to help your incident management team identify any opportunities for procedure improvement.

Updates will send out notification messages in the specific incident channel when the incident properties change.

This flag allows you to notify the incident channel whenever the incident status changes.

This flag allows you to notify the incident channel whenever a publication is made to a status page for the specific incident.

🚧 Under Construction 🚧

Some additional settings can be applied to the notifications so you can further customize the way your team is notified.

This flag allows you to announce each timeline update as a broadcasted message. Timeline updates are threaded messages by default. Although it keeps the channel quiet, it has a higher potential to get missed. By broadcasting each update, the incident channel will light up to notify users of a new update.

This flag allows you to tag each user that is mentioned by Rootly on each timeline update. Teams often like to keep this flag turned off to avoid notification fatigue.

The second category of settings you can set up Smart Defaults for is incident channel settings.

Incident Slack channel settings will determine how each incident Slack channel will behave in response to an incident.

This flag allows you to automatically create an incident Slack channel for each new incident declared on Rootly. We highly recommend that you create a designated channel for each declared incident. Working through incidents via a single thread is highly inefficient and difficult to track.

This setting allows you to select from a list of channel naming formats.

This flag allows you to auto add a bookmark in the incident Slack channel that links to the specific incident in the Rootly web UI.

This flag allows you to auto update the incident Slack channel topic field when any of the following incident property changes:

This flag allows you to grant Rootly the permission to bypass any restrictions where only Slack admins can create Slack channels.

Interactions settings will allow you to define how your end users can interact with the incident Slack channels through emoji shortcuts.

Rootly supports the following emoji-triggered actions:

Each action can be triggered by one or more emojis. Please select emojis that are not commonly used in day-to-day Slack conversations (e.g. 👍, 😄, etc.) to avoid mistriggers.

Archive channels settings will allow you to define when each incident Slack channel is archived.

This flag allows you to auto archive an incident channel once the incident resolves. Archiving dormant channels is highly recommended to keep your workspace clean and clutter-free. You might want to set the duration to 1-2 days to allow your team time to clean up any content in the channel before archiving it.

This flag allows you to auto archive any test or tutorial incidents created during gamedays, trial runs, or learning sessions after 24 hours from creation.

Members settings are miscellaneous flags relating to how your Slack users are handled by Rootly.

This flag enforces that each member in your Rootly organization must go through the initial step of establishing a connection with their Slack account. In the rare case where users don't need to use Rootly via Slack, you can turn off this flag to allow them to skip the connection step.

This flag allows you to log any user that joins an incident Slack channel as part of the incident timeline. Turn this flag off to reduce your incident timeline to only incident events.

This flag allows you to log any user that leaves an incident Slack channel as part of the incident timeline. Turn this flag off to reduce your incident timeline to only incident events.

If you need help or more information about this integration, please contact [email protected] or start a chat by navigating to Help > Chat with Us.