Create Postmortems

Postmortems are a way to summarize the resolution for an incident once it is resolved

Postmortems are a way to summarize the resolution for an incident once it is resolved. It is also a way for you to create a knowledge-base of failures and fixes that can be shared across your team to help build a culture of shared learning and learning from failures.

In this documentation, we’ll be going through how to create Postmortems.

Prerequisites

• Ensure that the users of the Team have the right Roles (with the right permissions associated with the Postmortem entity) to be able to create and manage Postmortems

• The Postmortem feature is enabled for an incident only after it has been resolved. Hence, an incident first needs to be resolved.

Creating a Postmortem

To create a Postmortem for a resolved incident:

1. Navigate to the Incident Details page for the incident and click on Start Postmortem.

2. You can select one of the Postmortem Templates from the drop-down.

3. The Postmortem Title is auto-populated with your Incident Name as default. You can edit it, and start documenting the Postmortem.

Note: The incident variables will auto-populate as per the data available for that particular incident. The remaining details need to be manually filled in by the user by editing the Postmortem.

4. You can select the Postmortem Status from the drop-down. The status indicates where in our process the postmortem currently is. The available statuses include:

   1. In Progress - Indicates that the postmortem is currently a work in progress.

   2. Under Review - Indicates that the postmortem is currently under review.

   3. Published - Indicates that the postmortem has been reviewed and is published. This is the final stage.

Note: You can export postmortem reports at any stage, and this status field will not be reflected in the exported file.

5. Apart from the Markdown body in a Postmortem, you can also create a checklist of follow-ups that can be used to keep track of further actions that need to be done for that incident.

6. Click on Create to save the Postmortem

Once a Postmortem is created, any member of the Team with the right permissions can view and manage the Postmortem

Note: Once the Postmortem is created (and updated), it can be downloaded offline in either Markdown (MD) or PDF format.

Adding Attachments

You can add a variety of file types as an attachment in the Postmortem of an incident.

To attach a file, drag and drop the file to the markdown editor. You can also copy-paste the file directly into the markdown editor.

The maximum size for a single file is 10 MB (for upload). You can upload a maximum of 5 files at a time.

The storage limit for an organization depends on the plan: Free Plan - 50 MB Pro, Premium, and Enterprise - Unlimited

File uploads won’t work if the plan limit has been reached. File once uploaded cannot be deleted.

The supported file types are:

• Images (.png, .jpg, .jpeg)

• Word Processors (.doc, .docx, .odt, pages)

• Spreadsheets (.xls, .xlsx, numbers)

• PDFs (.pdf)

• Presentations (.ppt, .pptx. .odp)

• Miscellaneous (.log, .txt, .odv, .csv, key, json, log)

Updating a Postmortem

We understand that conducting Postmortems and documenting them is an iterative process in some cases. In Squadcast, once a Postmortem is created, users with the right permissions can update the Postmortems as well.

There are 2 ways to do this:

1. For an incident, head over to its Incident Details page and click on Update Postmortem. Switch to the Edit mode. Then, make the necessary modifications and click on Update

2. Head over to Postmortems from the navigation on the left, and scroll to the applicable Postmortem in the list. Click on the Edit icon, make the necessary changes and click on Update.

Have any questions? Ask the community.