Running an incident from the dashboard
The dashboard is not a read-only view of what happened in Slack. You can declare an incident from the incidents list, and run it from its own page, using the same dialogs Firefight asks for in Slack. Which surface you use is a matter of where you already are.
On an incident’s page the controls sit in two places. Things that are a property of the incident are edited where they are shown, so you click the thing you want to change. Things that move the incident from one state to another live in the ⋮ menu at the top right, next to the channel link.
Declaring an incident
Section titled “Declaring an incident”Declare incident at the top of the incidents list opens your workspace’s Declare form, the same one /ff new opens in Slack, so it asks for the same fields including any custom ones.
Firefight creates the incident channel straight after, which takes a moment. Until it exists, the channel button on the incident’s page is greyed out and shows the name the channel is about to get. If it stays greyed out, creating the channel failed.
Change severity or status
Section titled “Change severity or status”Click the severity or the status badge at the top of the page. Both open the Post an update dialog with the incident’s current values filled in.
They open the whole dialog rather than a short list because that is what your workspace configured. If the Update form asks for a written message, or for a custom field, it asks for it here too. That is the same dialog /ff update, /ff status and /ff severity open in Slack, so an update posted from the dashboard reads the same in the channel and records the same timeline entry.
Assign the lead and the other roles
Section titled “Assign the lead and the other roles”Click the person under Lead, or the person next to any role in the Roles panel. Both are dropdowns of everyone in the workspace.
Every configured role is listed whether or not anyone holds it, so a role nobody has taken yet can be filled here. Picking Unassigned clears a role. The incident lead is the one exception and cannot be cleared, only handed to someone else, so the incident always has someone accountable. Each change announces itself in the incident channel exactly as /ff lead and /ff roles do.
Resolve, cancel and reopen
Section titled “Resolve, cancel and reopen”Open the ⋮ menu.
| Action | What happens |
|---|---|
| Post an update | The Update dialog, the same as clicking a badge. |
| Resolve incident | The Resolve dialog. Closes the incident, which is what makes a postmortem available. |
| Cancel incident | The Cancel dialog. The incident stays with its channel and timeline, but never counts as resolved. |
| Reopen incident | Only on an incident that is already over. Puts it back on your default live status. |
Resolve and Cancel ask what your workspace’s Resolve and Cancel forms ask, which may include custom fields. If you have more than one status in the Closed or Canceled stage, they ask which one applies. If you have only one, they do not, because there is nothing to choose. See Statuses, severities & types.
An incident that is over stops offering the badges and the role pickers, because every one of those changes announces itself in a channel that may already be archived. Reopen it first. It also stops taking new actions, and its runbook steps can no longer be claimed, because both are work during the incident. Follow-ups can still be added, since they are the work that comes after.
Work the action items
Section titled “Work the action items”Every action and follow-up in the sidebar has a menu on hover.
- Pick up takes an unclaimed item and marks it in progress. It appears only while nobody holds it.
- Mark done completes it.
- Assign to hands it to anyone in the workspace.
Taking an item yourself and handing it to someone else are different things. Taking your own work is silent, because you already know. A handover posts in the incident channel, so the person finds out.
Claim a runbook step
Section titled “Claim a runbook step”Expand a runbook in the Runbooks panel to see its steps, who is on each one, and which are done. Claim on a step takes it, which creates the action item behind that step and puts it in the sidebar alongside everything else.
Claiming a step somebody else already holds hands it over rather than creating a second copy.
Link incidents together
Section titled “Link incidents together”The ⋮ menu also carries the two relationships.
Link to an incident records that two incidents are related. Both name the other on their timelines and neither changes status.
Mark as duplicate is for when this incident turns out to be the same event as another. This one is cancelled and points at the one you pick, which stays open as the real incident.
Both match /ff link and /ff duplicate in Slack.
Bring people in
Section titled “Bring people in”The ⋮ menu carries three ways to involve other people, all of which post in the incident channel.
Ask someone to pick this up names one person and says why you need them. They get a message of their own with an acknowledge button, the ask goes in the incident channel, and Firefight reminds them if they do not answer. Reach for this when you need a particular person to respond, not just to watch.
Bring people in adds responders to the incident channel so they can follow along and join in. It asks nobody for anything, which is the difference from the one above.
Give a shoutout thanks someone for their work, posted in the incident channel where everyone working the incident sees it.
All three match /ff escalate, /ff invite and /ff shoutout in Slack. Each offers the people already in your workspace. To pull in somebody Firefight has not seen yet, invite them from Slack.
An incident that has been resolved or cancelled shows these greyed out with the reason, as does one whose channel Firefight is still creating, because all three need a channel to post in.
Open the channel
Section titled “Open the channel”The channel name at the top right opens the incident’s channel in your Slack app.
What still lives in Slack
Section titled “What still lives in Slack”/ff catchup posts a written catch-up into the channel, and has no dashboard equivalent.
See the Slack command reference for everything available there.