Configuring Teams

Documentation Index

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Teams allow you to organize responders, define ownership of operational resources, and configure how groups of users interact with incidents, alerts, and communication channels inside Rootly. By creating teams, organizations can structure incident response responsibilities more clearly. Teams help determine who should be notified during incidents, which resources a group is responsible for maintaining, and how alerts or updates are distributed across communication platforms like Slack or email. From the Teams page, administrators and authorized users can create new teams, manage membership, assign ownership to infrastructure components, configure routing channels, and link teams to third-party incident management tools.

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Adding properties

While Teams in Rootly comes with built-in properties, additional properties can be added. This allows you to build automations and workflows for your incident response processes using this information: for example, quickly identifying the customer impact of an incident based on the related team. To add custom properties, open Teams, click Edit catalog, and click Add Property. You can choose from several property types, including text, boolean, and importantly references to other Catalogs. For each team, you’ll be able to find the values of these properties in the Custom Properties tab.

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Create a Team

Creating a team allows you to group responders together and define how that group participates in incidents and operational workflows. To create a new team:

1. Navigate to Configuration → Teams
2. Click Add New Team
3. Enter the team details:
   • Name — A clear identifier for the team
   • Description — Optional context about the team’s role or responsibilities
   • Color — A visual identifier used throughout the interface
4. Click Save

After the team is created, it becomes available for incident assignment, alert routing, schedule ownership, and workflow automation. Organizations often create teams that reflect operational structures such as Infrastructure, Security, SRE, Customer Support, or Platform Engineering. Teams should represent logical responder groups responsible for services or systems.

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Import Teams

If your organization already manages response teams in external tools, Rootly allows you to import those teams directly. Teams can be imported from supported third-party integrations such as PagerDuty or Opsgenie, allowing organizations to maintain consistent team structures across platforms. To import teams:

1. Navigate to Configuration → Teams
2. Select the relevant import option
3. Choose the teams you want to import
4. Confirm the import

Imported teams will automatically appear in your Rootly configuration and can then be customized further with additional members, channels, and ownership settings.

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Edit a Team

Once a team has been created, it can be updated at any time to reflect changes in organizational structure, staffing, or responsibilities. To edit a team:

1. Navigate to Configuration → Teams
2. Select the team you want to configure
3. Open the relevant configuration tab
4. Update the settings as needed
5. Save your changes

Team settings can be modified without impacting historical incident data. Updates to members, ownership, or communication channels will apply to future incidents and alerts.

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Members

The Members tab is where you manage the people who belong to a team. Adding users to a team ensures they can participate in incidents involving that team and receive relevant notifications. From this section you can:

• Add existing Rootly users to the team
• Assign a default Incident Role
• Designate team administrators

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Adding Members

To add a member:

1. Click Add Member
2. Search for an existing Rootly user
3. Optionally assign a default Incident Role
4. Save the changes

Assigning a default incident role allows Rootly to automatically apply the correct role when the team is attached to an incident. For example, a team member may automatically become an Incident Commander, Responder, or Communications Lead whenever the team is assigned to an incident.

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Team Admins

Team administrators have additional permissions for managing team-owned resources. These users are typically responsible for maintaining operational configurations such as schedules, escalation policies, or services owned by the team. Team admins may be able to:

• Edit team configuration
• Manage team members
• Update schedules owned by the team
• Maintain escalation policies
• Modify ownership of operational resources

To assign a team admin:

1. Add the user as a team member
2. Select them in the Team Admin field

Organizations typically assign team admins to engineering leads, SRE managers, or other operational owners responsible for maintaining response readiness.

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Ownership

The Ownership section identifies which operational resources are managed by a particular team. Ownership helps teams understand their responsibilities during incidents and determines which users are allowed to manage certain resources. Teams can own the following resources:

• Alert Sources
• Alert Routes
• Services
• Schedules
• Escalation Policies

Ownership can help answer questions such as:

• Which team owns a service?
• Who is responsible for maintaining an escalation policy?
• Which responders should be contacted when a specific alert is triggered?

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Channels

The Channels tab connects a team to the communication systems used during incidents. These configurations allow Rootly to automatically notify the correct Slack channels, user groups, or email recipients when the team is involved in an incident. You can configure:

• Slack channels
• Slack user groups
• Notify emails
• Default alert broadcast channels
• Default incident broadcast channels

These settings are frequently used by automation workflows to route notifications or tag responders automatically.

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Broadcast Channels

Teams can define default Slack channels where Rootly will automatically post updates. These channels provide centralized visibility for operational events related to the team. Two broadcast types are available: Alerts Channel Used to post notifications when the team is paged or when alerts are triggered for that team. Incidents Channel Used to post updates whenever the team is attached to an incident. This allows stakeholders and responders to monitor activity without needing to join each individual incident channel. If you want team members invited to the incident Slack channel when a team is attached, configure an Incident Workflow with the Invite Rootly On-Call to Slack Channel task — see Automatically Inviting Team Members for setup steps.

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Integrations

The Integrations tab allows Rootly teams to be mapped to external systems. These mappings connect Rootly to existing incident response or service management platforms, enabling synchronized ownership and automated workflows. Supported integrations may include:

• PagerDuty
• Opsgenie
• Splunk On-Call
• PagerTree
• Cortex
• OpsLevel
• ServiceNow
• Backstage

Mapping external teams allows Rootly workflows to interact with those systems more effectively and ensures operational ownership stays aligned across tools.

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Best Practices

When configuring teams, consider the following recommendations:

• Use clear, descriptive team names that match your operational structure
• Add all relevant responders so incidents reach the correct people
• Assign team administrators for teams responsible for schedules or escalations
• Configure Slack channels to improve incident visibility
• Map teams to external systems when using integrations
• Regularly review membership and ownership to keep team configuration accurate

A well-structured team configuration helps reduce confusion during incidents and ensures alerts reach the correct responders quickly.

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Frequently Asked Questions