Blameless App for Slack

Getting Started

We recommend you first read through our quick start guide to learn some of the bot fundamentals.

Incidents through Slack

With the Blameless App for Slack installed, users can start an Incident through Slack by running Blameless “slash” commands. When the user runs/blameless start incidenta modal will pop up asking the user to select an incident type, the severity level, Pagerduty service (if enabled), incident title, and add a brief description of the incident.Any configurations made for Incident Types and Severity Namings will be populated in the Incident Creation modal as options.

​Slack Incident Titles and Descriptions

Slack supports Incident Titles and Descriptions as separate field values. Refer to the Slack commands section for more information.

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Compact and Silent Modes​

For easier access to key incident information and operations and to reduce lengthy threads in an incident channel, the Blameless App can operate in Compact Mode to run the tasks checklist and display incident information in a dedidated separate thread, which is pinned at the top of the channel. Optionally, replies from Blameless in the channel can also be redirected to that dedidated thread if the Blameless App is operating in Silent Mode.

Compact Mode​

The Compact mode messaging focuses on useful information.

Silent Mode​

Silent Mode's replies are applied as threads to the incident in question.

Tasks

The Blameless App facilitates managing tasks during an incident via several commands designed to allow for ease when adding, assigning, and completing your incident tasks.

Tasks provide a mechanism by which you can ensure that certain items are completed or identified during an incident lifecycle. These tasks can be assigned to each status of the incident, as well as to a specific role or user (owner). As the incident progresses through each subsequent status (e.g from investigating to identified), the tasks for that incident status will become available.

Tasks are grouped by assigned role or by user, if the role has been assigned to a user, which makes it more obvious if a user already owns a set of tasks.Required tasks are tagged with an asterisk, and if they have links, they are displayed as containing a link.

If the Silent mode setting for the Blameless App in enabled (Bot Settings) is turned off, the main tasks list is displayed inside the incident channel thread. If turned on, the task list is displayed in a separate dedicated thread, which is pinned to the incident channel and can be accessed by clicking on the “replies” link as shown below in the message pinned automatically by the Blameless App:

Assigning Tasks to Users

At the start of an incident, each task is assigned a default role. You must assign a role to a user, for a user to be able to own and complete a set of tasks.

During the resolution of an incident, new tasks can be created and assigned to a role or directly to a user. When a user has been assigned to a role, the user name will appear on top of the tasks list, instead of the role.

To assign a role to a user, use the following Blameless command:

/blameless assign <slack_user_name> as <incident_role>

If you use the following shortcut command, a modal will be prompted to provide both the user name and incident role.

/blameless assign

Add New Tasks

The Blameless Slackbot facilitates the use of incident tasks via several commands designed to allow for ease when adding, assigning, and completing your incident tasks.

To create a new (add) task in the Slack, you can use the following slash commands:

/blameless create task <description>

or

/blameless add task

Complete a Task

The Task list will update as a task is completed or roles are assigned.

Marking non-assigned tasks as complete in Slack cannot be done (by design--as expected), even though Slack allows anyone to “check” a checkbox item--implying the task has been completed.

Non-assigned tasks cannot be completed before first being assigned to a user/role. You must assign a user/role to the task first. After you assign a user/role to a task, the assignee can check the task to complete it. The task description changes to strikethrough in the window, which is the indication that the task is completed.

If you attempt to complete a non-assigned task in the Slack Incident Channel, you will be able to check it, however, it will be followed by an error message appearing at the bottom of the list of tasks.

You may need to scroll down the list of tasks to be able to see this error message and in the Task list, the task remains checked, but the description no longer has the strikethrough.

Note that the task check box will remain checked until you leave the channel and come back into the incident channel (refreshing the channel). If you do so, you will see that the task is actually still incomplete (unchecked).

Task Permissions

While any user joining the incident channel can create and assign tasks to users, by default, only the user who has been assigned the task (also known as the task owner) can complete or reassign a task to a different user.

Optionally, a designated role that is configurable per incident type (refer to the "INCIDENT ROLE WITH FULL TASK PERMISSIONS" Setting can be given the permission to reassign and/or mark any task as completed or uncompleted.

This full task permission would be typically assigned to the incident commander (default) and is configurable on a per incident type basis.

Reminders

You can enable and disable reminders. When disabling the reminders, you can specify for how long (in days).

/blameless disable reminders for <*X*> days

If you do not include a number of days in the slash command, you will be prompted by the Blameless app.

The number of days to disable retrospective reminders for. Zero disables indefinitely.

Click on the "Submit" button after entering a numeric value.

You will also be notified by the Blameless app that:

Reminders are currently disabled. If you want to enable reminders press the "Enable" button.

Enter the following to reactivate reminders:

/blameless enable reminders.

If you wish to permanently disable reminders use the following:

/blameless disable reminders for 0 day

It is reversible using the Enable slash command however.

Follow up Actions

• If Jira is enabled, a new ticket is created automatically in your Jira account and linked to the follow up action in Blameless
• If Jira is not enabled, only the follow up action is created in Blameless

Follow up actions with Jira enabled​

If the JIRA integration is enabled, the following fields must be provided:

1. Select a different Jira Project, if you do not want to use the provided default Jira project
2. Select a different Jira Issue type, if you do not want to use the provided default Jira issue type
3. Select or enter specific values for each additional required and supported Jira fields, which may appear depending on the selected Jira Project or issue type.
4. Click the SAVE button.

Note: The default Jira ticket settings (e.g. project, issue type and supported custom required Jira fields) can be changed in the incident type settings or in the Jira integration settings.

 

 

When unsupported fields are detected, a warning message is displayed listing the list of unsupported fields. In this case you should select a different Jira issue and/or Jira project which provides supported fields or contact your Jira administrator to make those fields not required.

• Close if you decide to not create a follow up action at this time; or,
• Select a different issue type, or choose another project which has only supported fields.

 

Follow-up Actions with Jira Disabled​

When users are creating follow up actions (FUA) from Slack or the Blameless UI and Jira is disabled, the follow up action can be assigned to a Slack user if the integration with Slack is enabled.Start to complete the follow up action form:

1. Specify the title of the follow up action.
2. Select an Assignee - Select a Slack user, otherwise it will be set to None in Blameless.
3. Select the follow up action type (Prevention, Mitigation, Process).
4. Click the SAVE button.

Alerts

Blameless integrates with both Pagerduty and Opsgenie to trigger alerts to help notify and recruit the appropriate incident responders, as defined in your escalation policy defined in your Pagerduty or Opsgenie account.

Use this command:

/blameless trigger alert

...to trigger an alert via Pagerduty or Opsgenie. This command triggers alerts in Pagerduty if the Pagerduty integration is enabled, or Opsgenie if the Opsgenie integration is enabled. If both integrations are enabled (Pagerduty and Opsgenie), alerts are only triggered in Pagerduty.

If using Pagerduty, you must first import services defined in your Pagerduty account into Blameless. Go to the Pagerduty configuration settings under the Integration section to manually import your Pagerduty services.

Support for specific commands include the following:

Opsgenie

/blameless trigger alert

Pagerduty

/blameless trigger alert

/blameless show oncall

/blameless escalate alert

If the Opsgenie integration is enabled:

• A modal opens to let users select one or more Opsgenie services and/or one or more Opsgenie teams.
• At least one service or one team must be selected.

Swimlanes​

With the Blameless App swimlanes feature, you can minimize customer impact and get to resolution faster.

• When a complex incident hits, you can kick off parallel streams of investigation to get to the root cause faster.
• Assign roles and create ad hoc tasks to delegate responsibilities and stay on top of critical incident progress.

The Slack "/" Swimlane commands, along with the other available slash commands, appear in the following section.

Refer to the Slack Swimlanes Guide for more information.

Communications

You can launch a Communication one of two ways:

1. Enter the following slash "/" command in the Slack Incident text field:

   1. /blameless send comms

   2. /blameless send communication

   3. /blameless comms

2. Go to Advanced → Select a Command dropdown menu, and choose Create Communication to open a modal.

Note that /blameless communications is not a recognized command.

2. In the Inside your workspace field, add recipients.
3. In the Outside my workspace field, add email addresses.
4. In the Message field, enter a message to send.
5. Select Send.
   1. A notification is added to the incident channel, acknowledging that the message has been successfully sent.

Every message sent via Slack is also logged under the Comms tab in the Blameless UI. The Blamelelss app adds notification to the incident channel confirming that the message has been sent successfully.

Blameless Bot Commands