Understanding Incident Notifications
Understanding the available incident notification channels in Squadcast
Incident notifications represent alert information that is sent to users via the various available channels, which are Push, Email, SMS, and Phone calls.
Notifications are sent out only for the incidents created in Squadcast and they cannot be manually created.
Important:
- 1.Only users with Organization Roles
Account OwnerandUserreceive incident notifications. Users withStakeholderOrganization roles will not receive incident notifications.Stakeholderscan be notified of incidents by using the steps mentioned here. - 2.All users in the Organization have to verify the email address associated with their Profile in order to start receiving Email and Push notifications for incidents. Also, to receive Push notifications, the latest version of the Squadcast mobile app must be downloaded.
- 3.To receive SMS and Phone call notifications for incidents:
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.On the Free Plan, post the exhaustion of the free limits, and one-time allowance of 100 notifications (SMS and Phone Calls) for an account, you will stop receiving SMS and Phone call notifications. However, you will still continue to receive Email and Push Notifications.
Squadcast uses the following numbers to notify you of incidents.
You can either save the above numbers on your devices or download the below vCard to set up a contact for Squadcast automatically.
Each incident notification can be traced to a source. To access the Notification Logs for a particular incident,
Navigate to the Incident Details page -> Notification Logs in the Responders section.
Notification Logs for an incident
The Notification Logs include:
- 1.Cause: Indicates the cause of the notification, such as:
- 1.
Incident Alert: Notifications are sent out for incidents triggered. - 2.
Acknowledgment Reminder Alerts: Reminder notifications are sent out for unresolved incidents (if set up in the Escalation Policy). - 3.
Incident Watcher Notification: Email notifications are sent out when a user/squad has subscribed to watch the incident - 4.
@mentions: Email and Push notifications are sent out when a user/squad is @mentioned in the Notes section for the incident.
- 2.Name: User to whom the notification has been sent
- 3.Channel: Indicates the notification channel followed by the destination.
- 4.Status: Indicated the status of the notification, such as:
- 1.
scheduled: When the notification is scheduled to be sent out from Squadcast. - 2.
dispatched: When the notification is dispatched from Squadcast and has been accepted by our providers for further delivery. - 3.
sent: When the notification is dispatched from the providers’ platform to the user. - 4.
delivered: When the notification has been delivered successfully to the user. - 5.
canceled: When an incident has been acknowledged or resolved, the rest of the scheduled notifications will not be dispatched. The notification status of these notifications will be set tocancel. - 6.
failed: When Squadcast is unable to send out the notification.
- 5.Time: Indicates the time at which the notification was sent (or is yet to be sent).
To export the Notification Logs for an incident in .CSV format, click on the download icon next to the refresh icon on the top.
Note:
You can filter the notification logs based on the Causes, Type, and Status of the notification.
Note:
We have implemented redundancies for each of our notification channels. We will continue to add different providers for each of the notification channels going forward in order to provide maximum reliability for our users.
Important:
In some cases, even when notifications might have been delivered to users, the status could still be set to sent/dispatched. We depend on our vendors, who in turn depend on hundreds of carriers worldwide, to get notification delivery information. In rare cases, these logs might not be completely reliable. We might have to look further into it to understand certain situations. If you wish to receive more details on the notifications sent out for an incident, you can reach out to our Support team with the
Incident ID of the incident.Understanding push notifications:
- 1.You might see multiple push notifications being scheduled/dispatched if you have logged in to your Squadcast account on multiple mobile devices
- 2.You will not see any push notifications in the logs if you have not installed and logged into the Squadcast mobile app even though you have push as a notification channel in your notification rule(s)
Bypassing Do Not Disturb is a powerful feature to receive Push, SMS, and Phone call notifications for incidents even when your phone has the Do Not Disturb mode turned on.
Download the Squadcast vCard to create a contact for Squadcast, then follow the instructions below for mobile devices running on either Android or iOS.
Once the vCard is downloaded, a contact for Squadcast is created like below.
Star this contact before proceeding further.
1. Head over to Settings and navigate to the section that lets you configure Apps & Notifications or Sounds (each device has this configuration differently)
2. On the device we are using as an example, we navigated to the Do Not Disturb section
3. Navigate to Exceptions and configure the starred Squadcast contact to be allowed to notify even when the Do Not Disturb mode is enabled
Even if your Android mobile device is in Do Not Disturb mode, you will now continue to receive SMS and Phone call incident notifications.
Once the vCard is downloaded, a contact for Squadcast is created like below.
1. Launch the Contacts app, find the Squadcast contact, and tap Edit
2. Scroll down until you see entries for Ringtone and Text Tone. Emergency Bypass can be set for each. Tap either Ringtone or Text Tone
3. At the top of the menu is an option for Emergency Bypass. Toggle it on for each of the desired methods for this contact
Even if your iOS mobile device is in Do Not Disturb mode, you will now continue to receive SMS and Phone call incident notifications.
Users can choose to override the DND settings on their mobile phones and receive critical incident notifications from Squadcast via Push.
On an Android device, follow the steps as indicated below:
- 1.Navigate to My Profile -> Toggle Allow Critical Notifications
- 2.You will be redirected to the Do Not Disturb access settings -> Search and click Squadcast
- 3.Toggle Allow Do Not Disturb
- 4.A modal pops up asking you to allow access to Do Not Disturb for Squadcast -> click Allow and you're done.
On an iOS device, follow the steps as indicated below:
- 1.Navigate to My Profile -> Switch Allow Critical Notifications toggle
- 2.Next, navigate to this screen in settings -> Switch Critical Alerts toggle
Note:
If in case you have declined critical alerts from the pop-up dialogue in the Squadcast iOS app, then you can simply navigate to the settings for the Squadcast app on your mobile device and toggle critical alerts on from there.
Note:
MIUI and EMUI (Huawei and Xiaomi devices)
For these particular forks of Android, one may not be able to set sounds from the respective High and Low Urgency Notification Settings. Instead, one may need to perform the following steps additionally:
- Navigate to System Notification Settings
- Make sure High and Low Urgency Notifications are enabled
- From here, tap either High or Low Urgency to choose your sound
OnePlus Devices
OnePlus devices running on OS 10 do not fully support Override System Volume. These devices will not always override the system volume when the phone is silent or vibrating.
Important:
We have tested this feature on most of the iOS and Android devices in the market today. The below tables indicate the behavior observed:
iOS | Normal | DND | Low Volume | Vibrate | Silent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Any iOS device | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ |
Android | Override DND + Ring | Override DND + Vibrate | Override DND + Silent |
|---|---|---|---|
OnePlus | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ |
MIUI | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Realme | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Pixel | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Samsung | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
We intend to make this feature work as effectively as possible, as and when the OS will allow us to do so.
We use third-party providers to send out SMS and Phone call incident notifications. SMS and Phone call notifications are supported for all the countries across the world except for:
- Cuba
- North Korea
- Russia (SMS not supported)
Important:
- 1.SMS and Phone Notifications to Iran: While we do send SMS and Phone call incident notifications to users in Iran, we cannot assure its 100% deliverability.
- 2.Phone Notifications to Russia: While we do send Phone call incident notifications to users in Russia, we cannot assure its 100% deliverability.
- 3.SMSs to China: Incident notification SMSs sent to users of Squadcast in China will contain only the
Incident Title. Incident URL is not included due to government policies against the presence of any URLs in SMSs. However, users can quickly view and take action on an incident using the Squadcast mobile app.