Getting started with Workflows

Quick start

If you’re short on time, watch this 3-minute video on how to build a workflow in incident.io:

Introducing workflows

Workflows allow you to automate certain actions and behaviors based on specific triggers. For example, incident.io can automatically invite users or user groups to a particular Slack channel when a specific custom field is set on an incident.

Parts of a Workflow

Triggers: what should cause the workflow to run

Think of a trigger as something that happens to set off a chain of events. There are more than twenty pre-defined triggers. Common ones are:

• An incident is created or changed
• A user joins an incident Slack channel
• A message is posted in an incident channel
• On a recurring schedule

See Triggers for the full list, what fires each one, and when to reach for it.

Conditions: which incidents or users this workflow should run for

Conditions are a set of criteria that control when the workflow should run. If you don’t set any conditions, the workflow will apply to all incidents/users.

For example, if you choose the “someone posts a message in an incident channel” trigger, and don’t add any conditions, the workflow will run for every new message posted in the incident channel.

Depending on the workflow trigger, you can choose from a number of fields such as:

• Incident severity
• Incident role
• Incident status
• User (where applicable)
• Content of a Slack message (where applicable)
• Any custom fields you’ve defined

An example condition might be to invite a particular user group to an incident channel only if the severity is high, or the incident is of a certain type (ie, Data Breach).

Steps: what should happen when the workflow runs

These are the actions or behaviors which happen when the trigger fires and the criteria for the workflow are met.

A workflow can have one or more steps, which will be executed in order. Just a few examples are:

• Send a message to a Slack channel
• Send a direct message to one or more users
• Post an incident announcement in a Slack channel
• Create incident actions
• Create incident follow-ups
• Prompt a Decision Flow
• Invite user or group to the incident’s channel

Is there a step you’d like to see? Let us know in the Community Slack !

Viewing your workflows

Workflows Home lives at Settings → Workflows. This is where you can see - and make changes to - your organization’s workflows.

Click the workflow name to open it in the editor, or use the View details icon to the right of each row for a summary. The … menu on each row holds Edit workflow, Move to folder, Enable workflow or Disable workflow, Duplicate workflow and Delete workflow.

Getting Started with Workflows

Creating a workflow

Getting started

From a template

Click New workflow, then find Start from a template in the Create workflow drawer.

Click the template you want, and the workflow opens with its details already filled out.

From scratch

Create your own workflow from scratch by clicking New workflow in the top right-hand corner of Workflows Home, then Create new workflow in the drawer that opens.

You’ll then be prompted to choose a trigger for the workflow. This is the event that needs to happen for the workflow to run.

Clicking one of these triggers will take you to a form where you can configure the workflow to your liking.

Configuring your workflow

Name

Give your workflow a name that describes what it does. We’ll use this name in the list of workflows you see when you open Workflows Home, and we’ll link back to it when your workflow posts in Slack. If you don’t pick a name, we’ll create one for you!

Conditions

Here, you can choose the specific criteria that will control whether or not the workflow runs when the trigger fires. For example, you might want to only run the workflow for incidents with particular severity, or incidents where you’re the incident lead.

If you don’t add any conditions, the workflow will run for all incidents (and if your trigger involves users, e.g. “when someone joins an incident”, it will run for all users).

Conditions live in the Then checks the following conditions… card as chips, like Incident > Status > Category. Click the + next to a chip to add a condition, or + Add ‘OR’ condition group to add a group of alternatives.

The options you get will depend on the field you’ve chosen but might include is set / is not set, contains, or is one of / is not one of.

Not all operators support values - for example, is set or is not set is a simple true or false value, so you won’t be able to choose a value for that.

is one of and is not one of operators will give you a list of values to choose from: you can choose as many as you like.

Steps

Steps are the tasks that the workflow will execute when the conditions are matched. For example, they might include posting a message or inviting a Slack user to a particular Slack channel. You can add multiple steps to a workflow.

You need to add at least one step before you can save your workflow.

Click Add step, then choose the step you want to add.

You’ll then be asked to configure the step you’ve chosen. The configuration options differ depending on the step.

For example, you might be able to choose a Slack channel or user, write a message, or select a Decision Flow to trigger.

Trigger options

If an option has a lightning icon (Use a variable) next to it, it’s a special dynamic value that depends on the incident - for example, “Incident Slack channel” will be the Slack channel that incident.io creates for a given incident, and will be unique for each incident.

Saving your new workflow

Once you’ve finished adding steps, click Save as draft. If you’re ready to set this live, then hit Save and set live. Once it’s live, the toolbar just shows Save.

Viewing workflow details

On a live workflow, open the … menu and choose Activity to see its run history. A draft has no Activity option. Run history also lives at Settings → Workflows → Activity, where you can filter by created date and see the workflow, incident and status for each run.

A list of runs looks like this:

Testing a workflow

Testing a workflow will check that your steps work as you expect them to. Due to technical limitations, you can’t currently test any workflow conditions.

Open the … menu and choose Test. Like Activity, it appears once the workflow has been saved live, and stays available after you disable it. A draft workflow’s menu offers only Advanced settings, Version history, Export and Delete.

Choose an incident to test a workflow against, and we’ll run the workflow steps you selected. If the trigger involves a user, we’ll ask you to select a user for the test as well.

You can use a test incident for this purpose.

For example, if you have a workflow that sends a direct message to a user who joins an incident channel, selecting a specific Slack user in the Test workflow dialog will send your workflow’s message to that user once you click “Test”. For this reason, we advise that you choose your own name!

We’ll then run the workflow, and let you know whether everything worked as expected.

Team ownership

You can set one or more teams as Owner of a workflow. Ownership decides which team the workflow appears under in their team views. If your organization uses team roles, it also decides who’s allowed to manage the workflow.

Set the owner using the Owned by control at the top of the workflow editor, or from the Advanced settings panel.

Setting the owning team on a workflow

Changing which team owns a workflow needs account-level permission to manage workflows. A team-role holder can manage the workflows their team already owns, but can’t reassign ownership.

To let a team manage only their own workflows, see Restrict workflow management to a team.

Make changes to an existing workflow

Click the name of the workflow you want to edit. Here, you can make changes to the name, conditions, and steps.

You can’t change the workflow trigger - you’ll need to delete the workflow and create a new one with a different trigger.

Click the “Save” button to save your changes. All future workflow runs will use the new configuration.

Delete a workflow

Click the “Delete workflow” option in the ”…” menu to delete the workflow. Note that deleted workflows can’t be restored, so make sure you’re deleting the right one!