Private incidents
Unlike regular public incidents which are visible to everyone in your Slack workspace, private incidents restrict who can see what’s going on. We’ll create a private Slack channel, which only the reporter is invited to. The reporter can then invite specific users to the incident.
Only the reporter and invited users will be able to see the Incident Homepage.
Enabling private incidents
Turn on private incidents for your organisation from the Settings page on the web dashboard, in the section labelled “Other”.
Creating a private incident
Declare private incidents the same way you declare regular incidents, using the /incident command in Slack, or in the incident.io dashboard.
You’ll see a drop-down menu at the bottom of the dialog labelled “Who should be able to see this incident?”. To make the incident private, select “Only invited users (private)”.
If you have any custom fields, the privacy drop-down will appear underneath those.
Private incidents on the web dashboard
We don’t include private incidents in the Incidents list by default. Show them by turning on the “Show private incidents” toggle.
You can only see private incidents you have access to.
A private incident has a padlock icon, and will show a banner on the Incident Homepage explaining that it is private.
Incident access
Requesting access to a private incident
Anyone trying to access the Incident Homepage of an incident they don’t have access to will see a placeholder page with a button to request access.
The placeholder page does not contain any real incident information.
Users can click the “Request access” button to send a message to the incident channel. Members of the incident channel will then be asked to allow or deny the request.
If you deny access, we won’t inform the user. An individual user can only request access every 15 minutes.
See who has access
The Incident Homepage will show you everyone who has access to the private incident.
People whose access has been revoked will still be listed in the Participants section of the Incident Homepage, but their avatars will be greyed out and the word “revoked” will appear next to their name.
Managing access
Change who can access the incident by clicking the “Manage access” button at the top right of the private incident.
Granting access
Users you invite will be added automatically to the incident Slack channel, and will be able to view the Incident Homepage.
Revoking access
Revoking someone’s access will mean they are removed from the Slack channel and they will no longer be able to see the Incident Homepage. They won’t be able to see the incident listed on the Incidents page.
If your Slack workspace restricts who can remove people from channels, we won’t be able to automatically remove a user from a channel. In this case, you’ll need to ask the user to leave the channel, or have a workspace admin remove them, before you can revoke their access.
Leaving a private channel
If a member leaves a private channel voluntarily, we’ll send a message to the channel asking if you’d like to remove their access to the incident. If you dismiss it, they will keep their access, and can rejoin the incident at any time through the Incident Homepage.
Private incident restrictions
To keep your information safe, there are some restrictions and exceptions we’ve put in place:
- Private incidents are not included in announcement rules and will never be posted in any announcement channel
- Workflows don’t run against private incidents
- Private incidents are not included in CSV exports
- When you escalate a private incident, we won’t include any information about the incident, other than a link to the dashboard, in the escalation.