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 1. xMatters Support
 2. News & Updates
 3. Highlights & Release Overviews




POLE POSITION (JUN/JUL 2022) RELEASE OVERVIEW

Doug Peete
Yesterday at 17:06
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The information in this article is the intellectual property of xMatters and is
intended only for use with xMatters products by xMatters customers and their
employees. Further, this intellectual property is proprietary and must not be
reused or resold.



You're in the cockpit of a highly-tuned Formula 1 racing machine. You posted the
fastest time in qualifying to take pole position on the starting grid. Your
breath catches in your chest — the starting lights blink to green! You rev the
engine, pop the clutch, and lunge ahead! You're racing flat out to take the
checkered flag and win the Grand Prix! In case it wasn't already obvious, we're
celebrating this release with a tribute to the classic arcade racing game, Pole
Position!

Our service intelligence capabilities put you in pole position to ensure your
digital services continuously provide value to your customers. In this release,
we enhance those capabilities with visibility into recent changes to your
service landscape that can help incident resolvers gain greater insight into
potential root causes so they can immediately take action to mitigate and
resolve issues. We've also got enhancements for customizing your resolver
notifications, the ability to use Slack as an xMatters device, a redesigned
interface for creating and managing on-call groups, new mobile features for
customizing and troubleshooting notification settings, plus tons more!

Before you dive in to learn about all the improvements, here are some important
dates:

 * Non-production environment access: Tuesday, June 21
 * Production environment access: Tuesday, July 12 (enabled between
   10:00-10:30am Pacific)

Pole Position Training Webinars

For a guided Pole Position tour — including tips and tricks — sign up for one of
our webinars.

Future feature release


As a special bonus, we'll also give you a sneak peek at an enhancement we're
working on for a future release:

 * Services as recipients — notify the right team, even when ownership of a
   service changes.
 * Linked incidents — associate related incidents to give resolvers insight into
   the incident landscape.

Our community shrinks images for convenience but allows you to click on them for
a closer look. See an image or animated GIF you like? Click it.

Jump ahead

In a hurry? Here's an overview of this doc if you want to skip ahead to
something awesome:

 * Incident Response & Service Intelligence
   * Service Intelligence
     * Change Intelligence
     * Service Dependencies Map Usability Improvements
     * Mobile: Monitor Impacted Services' Incident Engagement Status
   * Incident Response & Collaboration
     * Use Chat Apps as Devices (Slack)
     * Initiate Incidents from Microsoft Teams
     * Customize 'Notify to Engage' Resolver Notifications
     * Mobile: See Group Escalation Status in Resolvers List
     * Export Incidents in Bulk
     * Sneak Peek: Services as Recipients
     * Sneak Peek: Linked Incidents
 * User Experience
   * Create & Manage Broadcast Groups
   * Redesigned On-Call Group Interface
   * User Profile: Remove a User From a Group
   * Redesigned External Conference Bridge Screen
   * Redesigned External Data Configuration Screen
 * Automation
   * Flow Designer
     * New & Updated Workflows
       * Low-Code Workflows (& Triggers, too)
       * ServiceNow San Diego
     * New & Updated Steps
       * Trigger Custom 'Notify to Engage' Notifications & Flows
       * Add a Change Record to xMatters
       * Delete Microsoft Teams Channels
       * Microsoft Teams Online Meeting Step Includes Conference Outputs
       * Slack Create Channel Step Includes URL in Outputs
       * Create, Update, & Add Comments in Azure Boards
       * Create Events, Add Comments, & Mute/Unmute Monitors in Datadog
     * Usability Improvements
       * Better Ways to Manage Your Step Connections
       * Activity Panel Updates
       * Copyable Trigger Configuration Payloads
       * Initiate Incident Triggers Include Current Incident Details as Outputs
       * More Convenient Step Development
     * xMatters REST API Enhancements
 * Reporting
   * Redesigned Group & User Performance Reports
   * Unified Alerts Reporting
 * Other Mobile Updates
   * Customize Notification Settings by Alert Priority
   * Re-Log In to the App by Scanning a QR Code
   * Run Tests to Troubleshoot Notification Issues
   * View & Contact Broadcast Groups
   * Display Inactive Users & Groups in Search
   * Prevent the xMatters App from Hibernating (Android 12)
 * Other Product Updates
   * Add Custom Values to Combo Box Properties
   * Create Dynamic Teams Based on User Roles
   * Change Device Status from User Upload
   * Select All Users & Find Users With Missing Device Types
 * Early Access Program & Feature Delivery Update


INCIDENT RESPONSE & SERVICE INTELLIGENCE

Our adaptive incident management capabilities help you bridge your tools and
teams, facilitate collaboration, and automate manual processes with ease — while
intelligently providing insights into the health of your digital services to
inform and continuously evolve your incident resolution processes. In this
release, we add change intelligence capabilities, Slack as an xMatters device
type, the ability to initiate incidents from Microsoft Teams, customizable
resolver notifications, and more.


SERVICE INTELLIGENCE

The xMatters service reliability platform embeds services directly into its
incident management capabilities to supercharge your response to digital service
interruptions. This release, take advantage of the ability to identify recent
changes to your services that may be the true cause of incidents, usability
improvements to the service dependencies map, and a new view of impacted
services in our mobile apps to monitor the engagement status of service owners.


CHANGE INTELLIGENCE

Expert agree that change is the most common cause of incidents — so when
something breaks, one of the first things to look into is what recently changed.
Earlier this month we announced that we're embedding change information directly
into the service intelligence capabilities of our incident management platform:



By providing resolution teams with visibility into relevant changes within the
context of incidents, they're better equipped to identify the true causes of
incidents and immediately take action to mitigate and resolve issues. For the
full details about this feature and its functionality, see our announcement
article, Change intelligence for digital services.

How do I get change data into xMatters?

You can automatically feed change data into xMatters in several ways:

 * By adding the Add Change Record step to your flows in Flow Designer.
 * Using one of our new low-code workflows or Flow Designer triggers designed to
   feed in changes from specific products, starting with Azure Pipelines,
   Bitbucket, GitLab, and LaunchDarkly.
 * Directly via the xMatters REST API.

We've also added the ability to manually add a change record to a service in the
web user interface from the Service Catalog or an incident service dependency
map. This is handy to add one-off changes that aren't captured by your automated
change feeds:




SERVICE DEPENDENCIES MAP USABILITY IMPROVEMENTS

In addition to change intelligence features, we've made some other updates to
the service dependencies map to make it more functional and easier to use during
an incident.

Notify owners to engage from the service map

Let's say you're reviewing change records in an incident's service dependencies
map and you suspect that a recently changed service is the cause of the
incident. It would be pretty awesome to engage the owner of that service to
investigate without having to navigate back to the Incident Console, right?

You can now Notify to Engage a service owner from the service's info card in the
incident service dependencies map — and just like managing resolvers on the
Incident Console, you'll also be able to see their engagement status, stop
notifying, renotify, and dismiss them.



Improved navigation

The service dependencies map now includes a mini-map. If you've used Flow
Designer before, then you may already be familiar with how the mini-map works:

 * Zoom in or out by clicking the plus (+) and minus (-) icons below the map.
 * Click and drag the mini-map box so it highlights the area you want to show
   on-screen.
 * Use the 'Auto Layout' button to optimize how the current map is displayed.



Move services around on the map

You can also move services around as you're viewing the service dependencies
map. This can make it easier to see or edit how your services interrelate (note
that they'll return to their default position the next time you open the map):



Styling updates

You may notice the appearance of the service dependency map has improved. We've
updated the styling of the dependency arrows between services and the controls
for expanding and collapsing branches of the map. But what you'll really be
happy about is that it's now less finicky to define dependencies by dragging
arrows between your services.


MOBILE: MONITOR IMPACTED SERVICES' INCIDENT ENGAGEMENT STATUS

You can now tap the Impacted Services section in the Android and iOS mobile apps
to display an incident's impacted services in list view. This new view allows
you to monitor the resolver engagement status of each service, such as whether
the owner is engaged, if they're currently being notified, if there was no
response, or if the notification is escalating.




INCIDENT RESPONSE & COLLABORATION

Effective and timely communication is key to successful incident response and
collaboration. To support customers that primarily work in popular chat
platforms, we've added Slack as a device type in xMatters, and provided
Microsoft Teams users with the ability to initiate incidents directly from their
chat or Team channel. It's also now possible to customize the notifications sent
to resolvers when you notify them to engage in an incident.


USE CHAT APPS AS DEVICES (SLACK)

xMatters lets you receive notifications on your preferred devices, including
Email, Mobile App, SMS, Voice — and, more recently, Chat App. This type of
device allows you to receive notifications as direct messages in your preferred
chat applications: Microsoft Teams (included in our Out Run Release) and now
Slack!



Many organizations use Slack as their internal communication app. By adding
Slack as a device, teams won't need to disrupt their workflow to check an email
or open xMatters to collaborate. They'll be able to receive xMatters
notifications, view incident details, and respond to alerts directly in their
Slack channels.



To get started, go to the new Home tab in the xMatters App and sign into your
account — you'll then be able to register Slack as an xMatters device:



Don't forget!

This new feature is in addition to the existing ways we already integrate Slack
into your incident response, including a bot to help you in Slack and Flow
Designer steps to create, invite, and post to channels, as well as delete
channels that you're not using anymore.


INITIATE INCIDENTS FROM MICROSOFT TEAMS

Is Microsoft Teams one of your main collaboration tools for working on incident
triage and response? If so, you'll be happy to hear you can now initiate
incidents right in your chat or Teams channel. This streamlines your team's
collaboration process so you no longer have to switch back and forth between
xMatters and Microsoft Teams to manage incidents.

In your chat or Teams channel, select the xMatters app icon underneath the chat
box to open an Initiate Incident dialog box. Here you can select which incident
submission form you want to use to initiate the incident:



Once you provide details about the incident and fill out any fields on the
selected form, you'll be able to review the incident in your chat box and add
additional details before sending it to your chat or Teams channel:




CUSTOMIZE 'NOTIFY TO ENGAGE' RESOLVER NOTIFICATIONS

We've had customer requests for the ability to modify the default message that's
sent to resolvers when you invite them to engage in an incident. To allow this,
we've added a new trigger in Flow Designer that you can use to send a custom
alert notification to resolvers anytime someone selects 'Notify to Engage' to
add resolvers — from either the Resolvers section of the Incident Console or
service info cards in the console or incident dependencies map.



This means you can now change how the notification to engage looks (its layout,
text, and images) and the information it provides to resolvers. In fact, we've
already taken the liberty of updating the custom notification with new outputs
that provide context about the incident's current state (rather than details
about the incident when it was first initiated).



To read more about how to set up custom resolver notifications and flows, check
out our new 'Notify to Engage' trigger.


MOBILE: SEE GROUP ESCALATION STATUS IN RESOLVERS LIST

Previously when you'd notify a group to engage in an incident it could look like
no one had responded, when in reality the notification was escalating to
secondary on-call responders. To provide incident commanders with better clarity
on the engagement status of groups they've notified — and to prevent them from
unnecessarily renotifying groups to engage — we've added a new 'Escalating'
status:




We'll display this status once the notification escalates to the secondary
on-call resource, and we'll continue to display it until someone responds, or
for five minutes after the last user in the escalation path gets notified. After
this we'll mark the group as 'No Response' and you won't have to worry whether
you're spamming the group if you renotify them to engage.


EXPORT INCIDENTS IN BULK

Wish you could export the Incidents list to a spreadsheet file for your
reporting or continuous improvement processes? Maybe you want to calculate
cumulative metrics for subsets of incidents, such as the mean time to respond to
'Critical' alerts to improve your incident response strategy? Whatever the
reason, you'll be happy to know we've added an Export button to the Incidents
list:



You can use the available filters and columns selector to refine the list to
just the timeframe and data you're interested in before you export. This will
save you a lot of clean up or manipulation of the downloaded .xlsx file before
you analyze or share it.


SNEAK PEEK: SERVICES AS RECIPIENTS

We're in the process of adding services as official recipients in xMatters —
like users, groups, and dynamic teams. Right now when you search for a service,
you can select the group that owns to be a recipient or resolver. By having
services as proper recipients, you'll never need to worry about notifying the
wrong group if ownership of the service changes.




SNEAK PEEK: LINKED INCIDENTS

We're adding a new Linked Incidents section to the Incident Console. Here you'll
be able to create associations between existing incidents by adding a link
between them. Being able to identify related incidents can help resolvers gain
insights into the current incident landscape, determine effective mitigation
strategies from similar incidents in the past, and potentially reduce efforts if
multiple incidents have the same cause.




USER EXPERIENCE

Usability is a central theme for every new feature or enhancement we add — but
also for making our existing features even better. In this section, we'll review
some major new improvements we've made for creating and managing groups in
xMatters, as well as redesigns of our External Conference Bridges and External
Data Configuration screens.


CREATE & MANAGE BROADCAST GROUPS

We gave you a sneak peek of broadcast groups in our recent article, so we’re
really excited to finally bring these groups to production instances with this
release! When you next add a group, you'll have the option to choose whether to
create an 'On-Call Group' or a 'Broadcast Group'. Broadcast groups notify all
group members simultaneously, without the need to configure complex on-call
shift schedules.



The simplified group interface allows you to find, review, and adjust the
settings and controls you need to manage these groups. The Overview tab displays
important details about the group, any owned services, and the people associated
with it. You can drill down from each section to manage and view details about
the group’s services, members, admins, and observers.





REDESIGNED ON-CALL GROUP INTERFACE

With the introduction of broadcast groups, we’ve also enhanced the on-call group
page to support service intelligence and to create a more efficient user
experience.



The new overview page now includes useful information about a group’s members,
impacted services, on-call shift schedules, and more. From this screen you can
also update the group's name, description, time zone, status, if it should allow
duplicates (so members can be added to the escalation timeline more than once),
and if it should use failsafe devices when targeting members:



Similar to the previous group’s interface, there are dedicated tabs for the
group’s Calendar and Shifts. The new People tab contains information about the
Group Admins (formally known as Supervisors), Observers, and Members. The
Members section takes the place of the Roster tab and allows you to review and
configure shifts for each member.



And the best part? This redesign is only the start! We’re already working on
adding additional features such as information about the active incidents the
group is engaged in, and data graphs for monitoring recent incidents and alerts
involving the group.


USER PROFILE: REMOVE A USER FROM A GROUP

Estimated availability: TBD

Group supervisors and admins, rejoice! If you want to remove a user from a
group, you no longer need to go into the group and scour the list of sometimes
thousands of members to find the user you want. Instead, you can save time by
simply going to the user's profile and selecting Remove from group for the group
you want to remove the user from:




REDESIGNED EXTERNAL CONFERENCE BRIDGES SCREEN

Our External Conference Bridges screen gets a facelift this release, with a new
side panel that makes it more convenient to add new external conference bridges
and edit the details of existing ones:




REDESIGNED EXTERNAL DATA CONFIGURATION SCREEN

If you have data (such as users, devices, and groups) owned by a management
system (i.e., external ownership) you can ‘lock’ that data so it can’t be
changed in xMatters. For example, externally owned devices that are managed by
an external system can be ‘locked’ so they can’t be modified by users in
xMatters.

We’ve enhanced our External Data user interface to make it simpler to review
these object types and their properties. Use the drop-down filter to quickly
find and sort different Object Types. Then, check the Locked checkbox beside
each object type in the list to automatically lock or unlock the data.





AUTOMATION

In this release, our major focus was to continue making it easier to get
integrated with xMatters, with more Flow Designer native workflows and new App
triggers. We've introduced a new trigger for creating custom resolver
notifications, a new step and API call for adding change records to xMatters,
plus a bunch of great usability improvements to Flow Designer.


FLOW DESIGNER

Flow Designer is the user interface for our integration platform. Its goal is to
provide an all-inclusive visual canvas that allows users of any technical
ability across the enterprise to integrate and create incident resolution
workflows with ease.


NEW & UPDATED WORKFLOWS

This release we added seven low-code workflows (including four change
intelligence workflows), as well as certified the xMatters application for
ServiceNow for its San Diego release.

LOW-CODE WORKFLOWS (& TRIGGERS, TOO)

Our 'low-code' workflows simplify the process for getting integrated with
xMatters. You can install these workflows directly from within xMatters — just
select the workflow from the list of available templates and follow the
on-screen steps to set up the connection.

These workflows include new App triggers to accept the incoming signal. The
triggers are connected to a pre-built flow that — depending on the type of
workflow — either adds change records to xMatters or creates an alert that
on-call resources can respond to and have the option to initiate an incident.
With all types of workflows, you have the option to use Flow Designer's powerful
visual interface to further customize or enhance the workflow's functionality to
meet your organization's specific needs.

Change intelligence workflows

This release, we've added the following new low-code workflows that support
feeding change data into xMatters:

Azure Pipelines
Create a change record in xMatters for build events, deployments, and code
changes in Azure Pipelines. You can build automations to take action in Azure
that can help mitigate incidents.
Bitbucket
Create a change record in xMatters for code changes, pull requests, and other
events in Bitbucket. You can build automations to respond to Bitbucket events
and take action to revert check-ins or perform other tasks. GitLab
Create a change record in xMatters so you can monitor how changes impact your
service health. You can build automations to respond to events in Gitlab.
LaunchDarkly
Create a change record in xMatters so you can monitor the impact of LaunchDarkly
features when they're toggled on or off. You can build automations to update
stakeholders or send messages based on feature flag changes.

Other workflows


We also added these additional new and updated low-code workflows to the
directory:

 

Dynatrace Cloud Automation
Send alerts when xMatters receives a signal from a Dynatrace Cloud Automation
sequence, including information about the project, source, stage, and impacted
service. With the tap of a button the responder can initiate an incident in
xMatters.

Everbridge Signal
Relay key security insights to the right people so they can take action before
your company or customers are impacted. Automate responses such as launching
critical events, sending updates via ChatOps applications, and creating tickets
to prevent future issues.

Elastic (updated)
Send key insights to the right on-call responders when xMatters receives a
signal from Elastic, giving them the information they need to start resolving
issues right away.

NEW APP TRIGGERS

Our workflows are built using triggers and steps and we also release these for
you to use in your workflows. That means you can take advantage of the following
new App triggers to build your own custom signal handlers in xMatters:

 * Azure Pipelines
 * Bitbucket Issues
 * Bitbucket Pipelines
 * Dynatrace Cloud Automation Event
 * Everbridge Signal Alerts
 * Elastic Alerts (Connector)
 * GitLab Events
 * LaunchDarkly Alerts



SERVICENOW SAN DIEGO

If you're using the latest and greatest version of ServiceNow, then you'll be
happy to hear that Version 5.7 of the xMatters application for ServiceNow is
certified with Quebec, Rome, and San Diego.

For more information about getting integrated with ServiceNow, see our
integration guide.


NEW & UPDATED STEPS

In addition to the new app triggers we discussed above, this release includes a
new trigger to create custom resolver notifications, a new step for adding
change records into xMatters, as well as several other steps to automate
processes, reduce toil, and bring actionable context to your DevOps and service
management teams.

TRIGGER CUSTOM 'NOTIFY TO ENGAGE' NOTIFICATIONS & FLOWS

We've added a new Notify to Engage trigger to the Initiate Incident step. You
can use this trigger to run a flow whenever someone selects 'Notify to Engage'
to add resolvers to incidents created by the parent Initiate Incident step. The
main purpose of this trigger is to allow customization of the notifications sent
to resolvers when you notify them to engage in the incident. 

How does it work?

When you add the trigger to the canvas, Flow Designer automatically connects a
Create Alert step and populates it with a modified version of the default
message that you can customize to suit your organization's needs. The presence
of the Notify to Engage trigger on your canvas signals Flow Designer to initiate
the trigger and run any flow attached to it instead of sending resolvers the
default built-in notification to engage in the incident.



Outputs of the trigger include the resolvers who were notified to engage, as
well as current details about the incident at the time the trigger fired. These
outputs are available to the Create Alert step and any additional steps you may
choose to add downstream.

Other possibilities

Depending on your process, you may choose to include additional steps before the
Create Alert step and include outputs from those steps in your notifications.
You could even use a switch step to send different notifications or notify other
teams based on the incident's details (such as its current status or severity,
for example).

AUTOMATICALLY ADD CHANGE RECORDS TO XMATTERS

Want to automatically feed change data into xMatters as part of your new or
existing flows? We've released an 'Add Change Record' step that uses our REST
API to add change records to xMatters. Don't worry, no coding is required!
Simply drop the step into your flow and then drag outputs from previous steps to
populate the record with information about the change.



DELETE MICROSOFT TEAMS CHANNELS

Flow Designer makes it easy to create new Microsoft Teams channels as part of
your incident management process — and now, using our new Microsoft Teams Delete
Channel step, it's also easy to tidy up existing channels that you're not using
anymore.



Note: Deleted channels still count toward your team channel limits until they're
permanently deleted by Microsoft Teams after 30 days. For more information, see
Microsoft's documentation on Limits and specifications for Microsoft Teams.

MICROSOFT TEAMS CREATE ONLINE MEETING STEP INCLUDES CONFERENCE OUTPUTS

"Does anyone have the dial-in info for this meeting?"

We've all been there — but, your teams don't have to be! If an online meeting
created with our Microsoft Teams Create Online Meeting step includes audio
conferencing, details about the conference are now included as step outputs.

You can include these outputs in subsequent steps of your flow to automatically
share the dial-in information and conference ID with your team. We'll also add
this information to the Incident Console if your meeting is included as a
collaboration channel in an incident.



SLACK CREATE CHANNEL STEP INCLUDES URL IN OUTPUTS

Want to include the URLs of channels you create with our Slack Create Channel
step in your alerts and other updates? We've added a new Channel URL output that
you can include in other steps in your flow to provide users with a direct link
to join the channel in Slack:



CREATE, UPDATE, & ADD COMMENTS IN AZURE BOARDS

We've added the following new steps that allow you to take action in Azure
Boards as part of your workflow process:

 * Add Comment — Add a comment to an existing issue in Azure Boards.
 * Create Work Item — Create a new issue in Azure Boards, populating it with
   information from the alert or any previous steps in the flow.
 * Update Work Item — Update an issue as information about the problem or alert
   changes.



CREATE EVENTS, ADD COMMENTS, & MUTE/UNMUTE MONITORS IN DATADOG

We've also released four new Datadog steps that you can to automatically create
events, add comments, and mute or unmute monitors:

 * Add Comment — Add a comment to an existing Datadog event.
 * Create Event — Create a new event in Datadog, populating it with information
   from the alert or any previous steps in the flow.
 * Mute Monitor — Mute an entire Datadog monitor, or partially mute it by
   setting a scope.
 * Unmute Monitor — Unmute an entire Datadog monitor, or partially unmute it by
   setting a scope.




USABILITY IMPROVEMENTS

Flow Designer may be the premier low-code automation tool for service
reliability, but that doesn't stop us from looking for ways to make it better
and more fun for users. In this release, we've added the ability to drag & drop
steps right into your flows, provided new options for removing step connections,
updated our trigger and workflow installation screens to help you get integrated
faster, and more!

BETTER WAYS TO MANAGE YOUR STEP CONNECTIONS

You no longer need to manually draw connections between your steps in Flow
Designer! Instead, simply bring a step near the one you want to connect it to —
or in between two connected steps — and when you see the blue plus ('+') symbol,
release the step and it will automatically connect:



Removing connections
We've also introduced new options to a step's menu to remove step connections:

 * Remove Step from Flow – Extract a step from between two other steps and
   reconnect the flow.



 * Delete Connectors – Delete a step's inbound and outbound connectors.



 * Delete Inbound or Outbound Connector – Delete only a step's inbound or
   outbound connector (the animated GIF below shows how each is removed
   separately).



ACTIVITY PANEL UPDATES

This release brings a couple of great enhancements to the Activity panel that
will come in handy if you're troubleshooting your flows.

Resizable Activity panel

We've made it waaaay easier to see all of the relevant information that's
available to help you troubleshoot your flows: you can now optimize the Activity
panel for your screen width or personal preference!

Hover your cursor at the top of the panel to display drag handles that you can
use to increase or decrease the size of the panel. Likewise, you can drag the
borders between individual columns of the panel to view more — or less — of the
information for individual requests and their steps.



Filter by request ID

Seeing all the request activity for your flow can be overwhelming, especially if
a lot of the data isn’t relevant to the issue you're trying to solve. To help
with this, we've added a new Request ID filter that you can use to narrow things
down.

If you want to review the activity of a specific request to troubleshoot an
issue — like a problem with one of your integrations or alerts — simply enter
the full request UUID into the search field of the Request ID filter and click
Apply:



QUICKLY COPY TRIGGER CONFIGURATION PAYLOADS

We've made it more efficient to configure the source systems for App triggers
that require a specific payload. Instead of getting an example of the payload
from our online help, you can save time and copy the configuration payload
directly from the trigger's configuration screen in Flow Designer:



INITIATE INCIDENT TRIGGERS INCLUDE CURRENT INCIDENT DETAILS AS OUTPUTS

During an incident, it's important to keep resolvers and key stakeholders
updated on the current status of the incident and its resolution activities. As
part of our work on the new Notify to Engage trigger, we've updated all three of
the triggers included in our Initiate Incident step to include outputs with
context about the incident at the time the trigger was fired.



This means that when an incident's status or severity is updated, or you're
notifying resolvers to engage with your own custom message, you can now pass
current incident details to steps further along in your flow, including:

 * The summary and description of the incident.
 * The incident's severity and status.
 * The date and time the incident was initiated, and who initiated it.
 * The incident commander.
 * Any impacted services.

MORE CONVENIENT STEP DEVELOPMENT

When you edit the design of a custom step or trigger, we'll warn you that some
changes aren't allowed if the step is currently used in a flow. But what if the
step is in development, and you're the only one using it as you test it out? It
would be far more convenient to be able to make breaking changes than to create
new versions of the step when you want to modify it. To address this, you can
now make breaking changes to a step or trigger when it's used only on your
current canvas.


XMATTERS REST API ENHANCEMENTS

We continually enhance our xMatters REST API calls to replace older REST methods
and add more endpoints to increase programmatic interaction. These calls not
only support customer integration needs, they're also the foundation for data
access by our mobile clients, the web user interface, and other key xMatters
services.


NEW ENDPOINTS

Add and retrieve change records
Want to automatically feed change data into xMatters to enhance your incident
resolvers' service intelligence capabilities? We've added new endpoints that you
can use to add global or service-specific change records, as well as retrieve
them from your instance. (Note that you can't currently modify or delete change
records.)

 * POST /changes — Create a new change record in xMatters.
 * GET /changes — Returns a list of all change records.
 * GET /changes/{changeId} — Returns a specific change record, identified by the
   change's unique identifier.

Create and manage service dependencies
You can now create and remove dependencies between your services using the
xMatters REST API, instead of manually drawing them on the service dependency
map! Here are the endpoints you'll need to create and manage the dependencies
between your services:

 * POST /service-dependencies — Create or modify a dependency between two
   services.
 * GET /service-dependencies — Returns a list of all service dependencies.
 * GET /service-dependencies/{id} — Returns a specific service dependency,
   identified by its unique identifier.
 * DELETE /service-dependencies — Delete the dependency between two services.


UPDATED ENDPOINTS

Filter users by device status
Want to search for users based on their device status? For example, maybe you'd
like to get a list of users who have inactive devices to help troubleshoot why
people aren't receiving notifications.

 * GET /people?devices.status=ACTIVE — Returns a list of active devices for each
   user.
 * GET /people?devices.status=INACTIVE — Returns a list of inactive devices for
   each user.

Find users without a failsafe device
It's helpful for users to have a failsafe device to ensure they're still
notified if they're on call, even when their devices don't have an active
timeframe. You can now use the xMatters REST API to look up which of your users
have a failsafe device configured — and more importantly, which ones don't:

 * GET /people?devices.failsafe.exists=true — Returns users that have at least
   one failsafe device.
 * GET /people?devices.failsafe.exists=false — Returns users with no failsafe
   device.


OTHER UPDATES

Search terms can include spaces & other delimiting characters
Wish you could search for a literal string that contains spaces and other
delimiting characters? Great news! You can now enclose search terms in double
quotes to preserve spaces or other delimiters when you're using the search
parameter. Here are a couple of examples:

 * GET /people?search="sue ellen"&fields=FIRST_NAME returns all users that
   contain "sue ellen" in the first name field.
 * In contrast,  GET /people?search=sue ellen&fields=FIRST_NAME returns all
   users with with either 'sue' or 'ellen'.


REPORTING

Visibility into your incident response landscape is a key aspect of continuous
improvement and more efficient incident response. In this release, we redesigned
and improved the usability of Group and User Performance reports, made
additional enhancements to the Alerts list, and officially retired the Recent
Alerts report.


REDESIGNED GROUP & USER PERFORMANCE REPORTS

The Group and User Performance reports are vital resources to see how teams
responded to incidents. Our newly designed user interface offers an enhanced
experience and improved performance, while still including the same critical
information you’re used to seeing in our previous reports.



You can now see the mean time to first response (MTTFR) for users and groups in
a line chart and use it to identify potential opportunities to improve
operations.



Columns can be expanded to view additional details (such as the type of
responses or escalations), or collapse columns for easier reading. And, to make
it even easier to review data, the report can also be viewed in ‘full screen
mode’.



Want to know more about a specific group or user? Click their name in the report
to drill down and see the underlying data.



But that's not all!

To further improve the group performance reporting experience, we’ve also
updated the Group Performance widget to give you the option to filter the data
to only display selected groups.




UNIFIED ALERTS REPORTING

The time has come! With the Pole Position release, we are officially retiring
the Recent Alerts report. You can now review and manage your alerts exclusively
from the unified Alerts report:



Since our last release, we've made a few final updates to the functionality of
the Alerts list:

 * Shift-click to bulk select alerts: Select an alert, then hold the 'Shift' key
   and select another alert in the list to select all the alerts in between.
 * Shortcut to an alert's assets: When available, click icons below an alert ID
   to view an alert's attachments, comments, conference bridge, or suppressed
   notifications.
 * Filter alerts with a conference bridge: Use the 'Conference Bridge' filter
   and column to find alerts with a bridge, or alerts with a particular value in
   their bridge ID or title.
 * Export all of your alerts: Export more than 100,000 alerts to a .csv file.
 * See how users were notified in the alert export: A 'Notified Groups' column
   shows whether users received a direct notification, or whether they were
   notified as a member of a group specified in the column.
 * Find alerts that contain particular terms: The 'Initiator', 'Form', and
   'Source' filters include a new option to search for alerts that contain a
   search phrase.
 * Custom views: Save your current view of the Alerts report to quickly load it
   again, use it with the Alerts widget on your dashboard, or share the view
   with other users, roles, or groups.




OTHER MOBILE UPDATES

In addition to mobile enhancements for services and incident response, this
release includes new ways to customize and test your notification settings, the
ability to sign into the app anytime using a QR code, support for broadcast
groups, and various other usability improvements.


CUSTOMIZE NOTIFICATION SETTINGS BY ALERT PRIORITY

Over the last couple of releases, we've overhauled the Notification Settings
screens of our Android and iOS mobile apps so you can customize how you're
notified about low, medium, and high priority alerts. You're now able to:

 * Configure different repeat notification settings and custom sounds for each
   priority level (iOS and Android).
 * Allow high priority alerts to override your device's Do Not Disturb settings
   and system volume preference (iOS).
 * Allow high, medium, or low priority alerts to override your device's Do Not
   Disturb settings and system volume preferences (Android).




RE-LOG IN TO THE APP BY SCANNING A QR CODE

We know the feeling — you get a new device and have to reconfigure all your apps
again, or you get logged out and really don’t want to have to type out all your
credentials, again. That’s why we’ve created a quick and safe way to log back
into the xMatters app using a generated QR code (just like the first time you
logged in)! 

Simply head to your devices page in xMatters, find the app device you want to
use to log in and scan the QR code! It’s as simple as that. 




RUN TESTS TO TROUBLESHOOT NOTIFICATION ISSUES

Not receiving notifications on the mobile app? Want to pinpoint the exact issue
without having to contact Support? Or, maybe you just want to send yourself a
test notification to confirm your notification settings are properly set up?

We're adding a new troubleshooting screen to our Android & iOS mobile apps that
you can use to run tests to confirm you can receive notifications for low,
medium, or high priority alerts. If the test notification is unsuccessful, the
app will help you diagnose and resolve the issue.




VIEW & CONTACT BROADCAST GROUPS

We've added support for Broadcast groups to our Android and iOS apps. Broadcast
groups are a new type of group used to notify all members at the same time. You
can view broadcast group details and their members in your contacts and add them
as recipients or resolvers.




DISPLAY INACTIVE USERS & GROUPS IN SEARCH

Wondering why one of your contacts is missing? In the xMatters web user
interface, inactive users and groups are struck through and grayed out, but in
our Android and iOS apps they simply don't appear. Since it can be a little
confusing when contacts disappear without a trace, we've updated the styling of
inactive users and groups to match our web UI, and they'll now appear struck
through and grayed out in the mobile apps. We've also added messaging to let you
know that you can't select an inactive user as a recipient, resolver, or
temporary replacement.




PREVENT THE XMATTERS APP FROM HIBERNATING (ANDROID 12)

In newer versions of the Android operating system, when users don't interact
with an app for a few months, the app gets placed into hibernation to save
storage space. Since some users may only receive xMatters app notifications on
an infrequent basis, it's important they're aware of how to override this
setting to continue receiving notifications. To let them know, we'll be adding
new messaging and reminders to our Android app:




OTHER PRODUCT UPDATES

With every release, we find a way to pack in a few extra goodies for our
customers. We hope you'll find these ones handy:


ADD CUSTOM VALUES TO COMBO BOX PROPERTIES

Combo boxes (also known as drop-down lists), are one of the most powerful
properties. They let you pre-define values for message senders to select from,
helping ensure resolvers and other recipients get the information they need to
resolve an incident.



But what happens when someone goes to send a message and the value they need
isn't an option? For example, what if a new server type or affected area hasn't
been added to the list yet? What if the choices are "Yes" or "No" and neither
apply?

To address this, we've given message senders the ability to add custom values to
combo box properties when they send a form or scenario. They can simply type in
a new value and either click Add "[Your Input]" as a value or hit Enter on your
keyboard:



Your new value is now part of the combo box list! You can select this option and
have it appear in the notification you send to recipients.



How to set it up

By default, you can't add custom values to any combo box property. A form
designer needs to enable this option for the property in the form layout. We've
added a couple of new configuration settings, depending on whether you want
custom values permanently added to the list of values, or just available for the
current message:

 * Accept Custom Values — enables form and scenario senders to add a custom
   value to the combo box property when they send the message.
 * Save Custom Values — permanently includes any added custom values to the
   combo box property. When you save custom values, they become available on any
   form or scenario where the property is used.




CREATE DYNAMIC TEAMS BASED ON USER ROLES

If you've ever thought it could be useful to notify all the users in your system
with a particular role — say, all Incident Managers — then you'll be happy to
know we've added Role Name as one of the search criteria fields for dynamic
teams:



That means you can create a specific role-based dynamic team in seconds so it's
available to add as an alert recipient. You don't need to keep a list or
maintain a group with the users in your system who have the role — with dynamic
teams, xMatters checks the database each time you send an alert to determine who
currently fits the team's criteria and should get notified.


CHANGE DEVICE STATUS FROM USER UPLOAD

You can now perform bulk edits to the status of users' devices using the User
Upload tool. This is really helpful when, for example, you're syncing accounts
with a tool like ServiceNow and the status of certain devices is mistakenly
changed to inactive — you can now simply upload a spreadsheet file and quickly
change them all back to active.


SELECT ALL USERS & FIND USERS WITH MISSING DEVICE TYPES

Finally, to wrap things up, we've made a couple of small — but useful! —
additions to the Users screen that we think you'll appreciate.

Select all users

Wouldn't it be handy if there was a way you could select all users in the Users
list, without having to manually select them one at a time? We thought so too!
We've added a new check box to the table header that you can now use to select
all displayed entries:



Find users with missing device types

Want to ensure your users have configured all the device types your organization
prefers, such as Email, SMS, or Voice? We've equipped the Devices filter in the
Users list with new options you can use to quickly find users missing these
device types:




EARLY ACCESS PROGRAM & FEATURE DELIVERY UPDATE

The goal of our current delivery model is to balance feature delivery with
customer change management processes. This means providing visibility into
upcoming changes for customers that want it, while allowing other customers to
have a more standard non-production environment that matches production.

If you aren't familiar with the current model, we release features only visible
to admins/developers at a faster pace than the quarterly release process. These
features should not impact end users until a customer provisions them into their
workflow. Customers can opt their non-production environments into the Early
Access Program to see features and functionality enhancements that impact end
users before they're released on a quarterly basis. All customer non-production
environments are updated two weeks prior to an official quarterly production
release to allow for testing and training on new features.

We regularly reevaluate and improve our deployment processes to ensure they
reflect industry best practices and customer feedback. For more information
about our deployment process, see our On-Demand Deployment Process and Early
Access article. We'll update that document whenever we make a change, and let
you know about the change through other appropriate channels.


LEARN MORE

These are the main features for this release but be aware that there are several
other small changes and enhancements we're delivering to keep xMatters looking
sharp. Detailed information and instructions for using these new features will
be available in our online documentation.

See you next time!


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1 COMMENTS

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   Karla Poplawski Yesterday at 17:05
   
   The Pole Position release is now available in production environments.
   
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RELATED ARTICLES

 * Pole Position Development Highlights & Support Notes
 * Change intelligence for digital services
 * Out Run (Feb/Mar 2022) Release Overview
 * Introducing Broadcast Groups
 * Missile Command (Jul/Aug 2021) Release Overview


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