June 13, 2025
Your Team’s On-call Is About to Get Better
Hey there, firefighters 👨🚒 We know you were probably busy with a few incidents yesterday, so here's some more features we've shipped for you to help!
👋 Automatically Add Users to Incident when Paging
When you page a user via Signals from an incident, we'll add them to the incident's Slack channel as soon as they acknowledge the alert. If an alert that's already been acknowledged is linked to an incident later, we'll invite the user who acknowledged it then as well! You can stay within your paging workflows and involve who you need as soon as you need them!
📝 Slack Native Alert Note Comments
We've added the native capability to view and create notes for alerts directly from the Slack message! Now you can provide additional context in the alert message thread, by using the comment button, or within the Web UI. Now you can stay in your current workflow and more efficiently add the context your team needs to resolve those alerts.
🔍 Additional On-call Coverage Visibility
We've rolled out coverage indicators across your entire infrastructure! Now you can quickly see which parts have proper on-call coverage through teams with default escalation policies. In Services, Functionalities, and Teams you can easily see which entities have a team and active escalation policy to respond to production issues. No more guessing about coverage gaps — you'll have instant visibility across your entire setup.
💅 Improvements
- Open / Closed Status Indicator: Signal rows get a visual indicator and tooltip to show whether they have an open or closed status
- Missing Default Escalation Policy Warning: Escalation Policy page gets a warning alert when there are no default escalation policies for that given team
- Alert Created vs Opened Time: Changes copy on alert timeline to be clearer that alert was created at a specified time, not opened
- Batched Change Event Notifications: We've introduced batched change event notifications and a new /fh changes Slack command to reduce notification noise. When multiple change events are related to an incident, you'll now receive a single consolidated notification instead of being overwhelmed with individual alerts.
- Shift Override Improvements: When creating an override that overlaps with existing shifts, we'll show you a helpful warning so you stay informed, but won't block you from making the change.
- Smarter Error Messages in Signals Debugger: The Signals debugger now displays clear, helpful error messages when your CEL expressions have syntax issues, instead of showing you an empty results list.
- Enhanced Audit Log Filtering: Audit log filtering converts Event Type and Resource Type fields to text inputs that support partial matching, giving you more flexible filtering options to find exactly what you're looking for.
- MS Teams Dynamic Channel and Chat Naming: Your MS Teams channels and group chats can now automatically update their names whenever you change an incident name — assuming you're using custom naming formats.
- Streamlined Slack Channel Topics: Slack channel topics now show only incident names, removing unnecessary dashes and empty summary fields for a cleaner experience.
- Better Zoom Transcription: Automatically add licensed participants as alternative hosts during incident meetings to improve transcription success rates
- Improved Incident Filtering: Updated incident filter buttons to use lifecycle phases instead of the old "Active", "Resolved", and "Retrospective" filters, giving you more precise control over what incidents you're viewing.
- Enhanced Form Validation: Added proper validation to the Incident Responders form to catch missing role assignments, preventing incomplete incident setups.
- Custom Field Timeline Support: Incident timeline and Slack messages now properly display changes to custom fields, giving you complete visibility into all incident updates
- Smoother Channel Selection: The Slack channel selector is now an paginated dropdown, making it easier to find and select channels in large Slack workspaces.
- Enhanced Date/Time Display: Date and time components now display with full timezone information, giving you better context when working across different time zones.
🐛 Bug Fixes
- Resolve Button Functionality: Fixed the issue where using the "Resolve" button in slack would silently fail.
- Audience Summaries: Fixed a bug that was returning outdated audience summaries. Now you'll always get the latest summary when using liquid template variables
- Slack Access: Fixed restricted access creation in Slack when marked as "no"
- Signals API Documentation: Improved API documentation for Signals with proper response body documentation and coverage for new endpoints including call routes, alert groupings, and custom event sources
- Mobile App Stability: Fixed a bug causing continuous retry loops and screen flickering for customers without Signals enabled
- On-Call Schedule Performance: Fixed timeout issues that could prevent large on-call schedule calendars from loading by adding time window filtering
- Runbook Logic: Fixed an issue where previously completed runbook steps weren't being considered as "started" for conditional step logic
- Audit Log Filters: Fixed broken drawer filter buttons that weren't working properly
- Status Page Management: Fixed validation errors when disconnecting status pages that were in conflicted states
- Incident Lifecycle Filters: Updated filter logic to properly handle lifecycle phase transitions
- Code Block Text Wrapping: Code blocks in markdown components now wrap properly and stay within their designated space, preventing overflow issues.
That's all for these two weeks! As always, if you have any questions or feedback, our team is here to help. Keep fighting those fires! 🔥
You can now set channel specific notification preferences per channel! This will help you cut out the clutter and surface only what you need. In order to take advantage of this functionality just use the 
Add Incident Timeline events with specific timestamps to capture earlier moments that weren’t recorded in real time. Click the clock icon to show/hide the datetime picker and place context exactly where it belongs.
We've introduced a new 
Sometimes you want to add people to Signals schedules who might not be a part of your FireHydrant Team – now you can! Easily add people to on-call schedules even if they're not part of the team, providing more flexibility in your schedule management.
For incidents that don’t require a retrospective, it can be easy to forget to change the state of an incident to “Closed.” Within the “Update incident details” runbook step, you will now see the Milestone for “Closed,” enabling you to automate the process of closing out resolved incidents, triggered by time lapsed or other criteria. This ensures no incidents get left in the “Resolved” state and you can more accurately track your incident activity.
Enterprise customers can now customize milestones in all four incident lifecycle phases, including the "Closed" phase, providing complete control over your incident management workflow.
We've enhanced the incident update process in our web UI to ensure all critical information is captured while maintaining a smooth user experience. This new feature introduces an adaptive approach for handling required fields when changing incident milestones, making it easier to manage incidents effectively.
MTTX Analytics now provides metrics for incident milestones, allowing you to explore data for each milestone in greater detail. Additionally, we've migrated task and follow-up progress metrics to the MTTX Analytics page, consolidating all your incident-related metrics in one place.
We've enhanced our milestones feature. You can now set field requirements at each milestone transition, enabling:
We've enhanced our custom field functionality by introducing a new date/time custom field type. This addition offers greater flexibility and precision in incident reporting and management. Here's what you need to know:
We're happy to introduce new time-based filters in Analytics. You will now see 
Runbooks are the core of an automated incident management process, and now, it’s even easier to get started with them in FireHydrant. Choose from several example runbooks for common incident scenarios. Additionally, when creating a new runbook from Scratch, FireHydrant will suggest several steps for you to add based on the integrations that you’ve already installed. Check out the updated experience by creating a new runbook today.
Not only is it easier to get started with Runbooks, but we’ve also revamped how you search and add step types. Now, steps can be listed out by either integration or category, allowing you to figure out which step makes the most sense for your process. Additionally, we’re now showing the configuration status for any integration steps that you might want to include. Don’t have an integration configured? Just click through to quickly set it up and get right back to your runbook.
Editing runbooks also got a lot easier with our latest release. When you navigate to a runbook now, you are dropped automatically into edit mode so that you can make quick changes and be on your way. Additionally, step-editing got even easier with a new two-step modal that allows you to configure the step and then set the conditions for running the step. Check it out today by clicking into any of your runbooks or creating a new one!
After launching MTTX analytics, we’ve overwhelmingly heard that custom fields do not just belong in filters, but also as distinct groups of incidents to be analyzed. We’re excited to tell you that you can now group by a particular custom field in MTTX analytics, allowing you to group incidents and their data into custom field driven aggregates directly in MTTX analytics. Try this out by navigating to MTTX Analytics and selecting “Grouped By” and selecting a custom field that you have on a significant number of incidents.
Slack channels during an incident can be a noisy place. Updates from responders and system messages from FireHydrant can get all tangled up and confusing. So we recently updated some of our Slack messages to be simpler and to-the-point, making it even easier to understand what has changed about an incident. Check out the changes the next time you create or update a task, follow-up, and role assignment. Also any edit to the incident details will be much easier to digest!
When using FireHydrant in Slack, users are able to easily update milestones and post a status update across all of their status pages. However, in the command center, this ended up being a multi-step process with milestones changes and updates being atomic for each status page. Today, though, we’ve shipped a new way to easily post status page updates across all of your status pages right in the command center. To the right of the “resolve” button, you’ll now find a dropdown that pulls up a modal for adding status updates. Users of Slack will find a similar modal to what they’re used to using in Slack!
Incident Summaries provide immediate, clear insights into incidents, streamlining the response process and enhancing team coordination. These summaries are designed to quickly onboard new responders and maintain ongoing situational awareness for all team members. You can access summaries right in Slack by running /fh summary or visit the new Summary tab in the command center for the latest updates! Want to learn more? Read up on summaries 
FireHydrant's Zoom-aware context enriches your incidents with insights directly from Zoom meeting transcripts, ensuring comprehensive situational awareness for all team members, regardless of their physical presence in bridges. Never worry about scribing live calls again, FireHydrant will take care of that for you. To learn more about installing and using our updated Zoom integration, check out 
Get a head start on learning from every incident with FireHydrant's AI-Drafted Retrospectives. This feature leverages AI to create detailed drafts for your retrospectives, incorporating essential incident insights and facilitating a focus on discussion and improvement. All fields on a retrospective, including Description, Customer Impact, and Lessons Learned. To read more about drafting Retrospectives with AI, checkout 
Elevate your incident communication with drafted status updates. This feature simplifies the creation of clear, concise, and audience-appropriate status updates, reducing the cognitive load during high-stress incidents. Use AI-Drafted updates from the Slack command 
FireHydrant now comes with team based on-call schedules, making coordination of notifications and incident management a breeze. Schedules are incredibly flexible, allowing you to create schedules that match your teams’ needs. As easy as managing a Google Calendar, on-call schedules in FireHydrant allow you to quickly re-assign shifts or even portions of a shift. Users can easily request coverage from their team without needing an override or a whole schedule recreated.
Escalation policies in FireHydrant make it easy to set up your on-call program for each team. Escalation policies will route incoming Alerts to on-call schedules, users, or even Slack channels and allow you to set up multiple escalation steps when an alert is escalated. Any step in an escalation policy can route Alerts to multiple targets, making rotations like follow-the-sun coverage a breeze. An escalation policy can also repeat as many times as you like and ultimately can hand an alert off to another team (using their default escalation policy).
Alerts in Signals start with incoming events, most of which can be easily created from webhooks. Signals comes with a simple HTTP webhook as well as many provider-specific webhooks to make sure the data gets properly ingested. Events can include a variety of data including your services and other catalog components to make sure Alerts are actionable for your responders.
Events are just the start, though, because Signals is a declarative Alerting system: we only create alerts for the events that matter to you. Each team can create and maintain their own Alert Rules that take incoming events, look for specific data in the payload, and then create Alerts that are sent to an escalation policy, an on-call schedule, or a specific user. Alert Rules use CEL expressions to help you create highly specific and powerful rules for matching incoming event payloads.
On-call users can easily receive Alerts where they need, including our brand new iOS and Android apps. Users can configure their own notification preferences which include SMS, WhatsApp message, voice calls (where supported), mobile app notifications, email, and of course, Slack. Regardless of where they receive notifications, users can quickly respond to alerts: acknowledging, escalating, dismissing, or even quickly opening an incident from them.
Signals integrates seamlessly into your incident management practices.
Easily declare incidents from an Alert to assemble your team. You can even create Runbook steps to pull in on-call engineers and send alerts to responders about new incidents.
And speaking of incidents, in FireHydrant, Alerts and Incidents are separate concepts. Not every alert ultimately becomes an Incident, an important distinction not only for your incident management process, but also for understanding the effectiveness of your alerting pipeline when reviewing your data.
To get started, read our 
Do all your status page updates look similar after a while? Have one flaky service where you know exactly what you’d tell your customers and stakeholders if someone told you there was an outage? Tell that to status pages! We’ve created status update templates that you can configure in settings. These will allow you to pre-fill out common updates to a status page, so that you have a place to start from when updating an incident from slack. Configure these today by going to Settings > Status templates, and using them the next time you run “/fh update”
Whenever a follow up is filled out, they usually could use some incident specific data in them as well. Today, we’re announcing changes that will make it easier for you to pull in incident information as you create a follow up. We’ve highlighted the liquid enabled fields and added some help text that’ll highlight where liquid templating is available and how to use it. Try this out by opening up a follow up from either Slack or the Web UI to see how it works today!
MTTX analytics is designed to help you find your baseline mean-time-to metrics and then break the MTT* metrics across any dimension. This applies across all metadata in FireHydrant: from Services, Environments, and Functionalities to provide incident response context across technology areas; to Users and Teams to help you identify who might be at the most risk of burnout. You’ll also be able to see how each of these compares to your baseline MTTX, and filter it down to see how specific types of incidents impact any of these dimensions in context.
As you look at MTTX analytics, there might be times when the data you see doesn’t match your intuition. We’ve added views in MTTX analytics that will help you validate, and clean the data that we’re using as our inputs to MTTX analytics. By clicking on the number of incidents next to a metric, you’ll not only be able to see the metrics for those specific incidents, you’ll be able to go directly into those incidents, and “clean up,” editing milestone times and metadata. You’ll even be able to identify incidents that did not get correct metadata, looking at incidents grouped under No Impacted Functionality/Service/Environment/… really any metadata that you might care to pull in. Any updates to metadata will update in real time, allowing you to see the impacts of your changes immediately.
After getting context on different dimensions as compared to the baseline, you’ll probably be asking the question of “has it always been this way?” Fortunately, we have the answer! By clicking on any grouping, you’ll be brought to a drawer that will show you not only Analytics for that particular grouping, but how those analytics have changed over time, and if there’s any need to be concerned. Find the service that has been progressively less reliable over time today, use it to make the case for proactive improvement.
We launched a new liquid templating experience to help you when building out runbook steps. You can now browse a list of commonly used snippets to quickly insert a template to your runbook step. And if you really want to dig into the details, there's a new Preview experience that allows you to see how your liquid templating will look with real incident data. This makes it even easier to use liquid templating to create powerful and useful runbooks for your team.
During an incident, it’s essential to have the most critical information readily available and provide updates as seamlessly as possible. That’s why we’re excited to release incredible improvements to the page that matters most: our incident command center.
Has someone ever posted a really good Slack message describing some follow-up work for an incident? Starting today, you can just add an emoji reaction to that message to easily create a new task or follow-up. The emojis are configurable too, meaning you can use whatever custom emoji you like to easily create tasks and follow-up tickets for your team.
Tasks and Follow-Ups Views
