Incident Response Automation

Automation contains response rules that are conditional triggers that execute response actions automatically, based on the contents of the alert.

An alert is created in Incident Response when a third-party monitoring tool has an event.

Response rules

Use response rules to automatically assign and respond to alerts. Response rules are routing that helps you adapt your response to specific conditions. Each rule combines a set of filters and an outcome, usually setting who is assigned, priority, or creating email, Slack channels, or Zoom meetings.

Watch this quick video to know what you can do with response rules.

A system default rule for automatic incident creation for P1 alerts is included when your system is provisioned. It is active by default.

View the response rules by navigating to the Automation module from your Home page.

Create rules based on any criteria available from the condition filter fields. You can also set filter properties on the rules.

Note: Prior to creating response rules, you should have teams, schedules, and integrations in place.

Rules are run only once on an alert, however, depending on when the alert or the rule entered the system, different things happen.

If an alert is imported, and rule 1 is the only rule, it will run only once on that alert.
If you add rules 2 and 3 after that alert was imported, they will not run on it unless the alert is updated. Those rule were never run on the alert to begin with.
If you close and reopen the alert, all three rules will run on it.

If you change an existing rule and an existing alert would have been captured by it, it won’t be. Whatever criteria or actions you have changed won’t be addressed unless the existing alert is closed and reopened. Then, whatever changed rule actions are will take place.

Response rules run in the order chosen, from lowest to highest. Or you can use the Rule Order icon to reorder your rules. Enter a new number and click Update in the Response rules list view.

Note: Administrators can reorder any rule. Responders and managers can reorder only their own or their team's rules.

Note:

Order is important for response rules because the lower-order rules run first. This can impact whether the conditions of higher-order rules are met, or will process. Lower-order rules can adjust field values or even stop processing.

The response rule list view can be arranged in several ways.

Note: This feature does not change the order in which the rules are run.

Order: Order they are in, ascending - Default.
Order: Order they are in, descending
Last Modified: Recent
Last Modified: Oldest

You can filter the listings using the Filters list menu in the header for:

System Generated Rules: Displays only rules that were created automatically when your account was provisioned.
My Team's Rules: Displays only those rules your team created.
Rules I created: Displays only those rules you created.
Active: Displays only active alerts.
Inactive: Displays only inactive alerts.

Name & Description represents the alert rule name and description.

Scope represents who or what is impacted by this rule. Whether the impact is Global or to a team or service.

Actions are denoted by the action icons.

Stop after run contains a pause icon if you wanted processing to stop after that rule runs.

Whether your rules are Active or not is shown using the slider icon.

For some examples of different response rules, see Response rule examples.

Note: Managers and responders can activate or deactivate only their own or their team’s rules.

Only administrators can activate or deactivate any rule, including global rules.