Enhancing On-Call Efficiency with Squadcast's Custom Content Templates

Originally posted on Squadcast.com

Critical information during Incident Management includes the incident's nature, impact, urgency, affected systems, and current status, enabling efficient resolution. Yet, the excessive details in incident notifications frequently hinders rather than aiding the process.

The Problem

Imagine during a very critical incident, you receive notification through Slack or SMS, only to realize that the notification does not contain any relevant information. This critical lack of context leaves you scrambling for additional details, wasting valuable time and potentially exacerbating the incident's impact. What can an easy solution to this be?

Solution: Tailored Notifications With Custom Content Templates

Squadcast's Custom Content Templates provide the remedy for these issues. It helps organizations craft incident messages and descriptions, ensuring that only the most crucial details are included. Let's check how this functionality works.

1. Access the Services tab, select the service you want to add a template for and navigate to Custom Content Templates.

2. Add a new template for a specific service, example, New Relic.

3. Choose the information you want to include in the incident message, such as service name, priority, and title.

4. Craft the description to provide context without overwhelming the recipient.

5. Tailor notifications for various channels like SMS, phone calls, MS Teams, Slack, and more.

An illustrative example that demonstrates how to define a template for an Incident Message and Description.

Here’s how a typical message from different mediums would look like:

SMS

Push Notifications

Email

Slack

MS Teams

Common Use Cases

1. Optimize Slack Messages: Tailor your Slack messages to display only the essential incident details, streamlining communication for better focus.

2. Personalize SMS Notifications: Customize SMS notifications by adding specific details or shortening descriptions, ensuring concise yet informative text messages.

3. Flexible Email Notifications: Enjoy full customization in email notifications, providing a comprehensive overview of the incident without character limitations.

4. Craft Insightful Push Notifications: Create push notifications with relevant incident details, allowing for quick insights into the nature of the alert and necessary actions.

5. Adapt Phone Call Notifications: Personalize phone call notifications, reciting incident messages and descriptions, offering a handsfree way for engineers to stay informed.

6. Customize MS Teams & ChatOps Alerts: Tailor notifications for MS Teams and ChatOps, utilizing payload information for pertinent details.

7. Receive Quick Overview for Rapid Response: Get customized notifications that precisely convey the nature of the alert, aiding engineers in prioritizing and responding promptly.

8. Integrate Payload Information: Seamlessly integrate information from the payload of monitoring tools, ensuring the customized template aligns with the specific needs of your team.

9. Reduced Dependence on Incident Details: Gain high level overviews through customized notifications, reducing the need to access the incident details and enhancing the ability to address alerts efficiently.

Benefits & Impact on On-Call Engineers: Prioritized and Informed Response

The advantages of custom content templates are far-reaching and transformative for On-Call engineers:

1. Meaningful Information: Engineers can receive notifications that are concise and tailored to their responsibilities, allowing them to quickly assess the situation's severity and prioritize their response.

2. Faster Incident Resolution: With a high-level overview available right in the notification, engineers can often discern the nature of the incident and necessary actions without delving into the incident details.

3. Reduced Noise: By eliminating extraneous details, the notifications become more actionable and less overwhelming, reducing noise and improving the focus on critical information.

4. Efficient Communication: Customized notifications facilitate clearer communication among team members, reducing confusion and enabling smoother collaboration during incident resolution.

5. Better Choices: Engineers can choose the information they want to see, eliminating the need to rely solely on preset incident messages and descriptions.

Read More: Dive into how Milk Moovement enhanced Customer Experience through On-Call and Incident Response revamp.