Managing Incident Tasks
FireHydrant comes with incident task management so responders can track what they need to do during an incident.
Tasks are intended to be mid-incident action items while Follow-Ups are items uncovered during the incident to be prioritized later.
In addition to creating and managing tasks, you can define Task Lists with preset tasks to help ensure consistency in your incident response and reduce cognitive load.
Create and Manage Tasks
Tasks can be created and assigned ad-hoc both via an incident's Command Center as well as in the incident's Slack channel.
To view and manage outstanding Tasks, the same tab in the Command Center can be used, and in Slack, the command /fh tasks [@user | all] can be used.
Using Emojis from Slack
From within the incident channel in Slack, you are able to react to specific messages with emojis to automatically create Tasks or Follow-Ups.
The default configured emoji is :ballot_box_with_check: but this can be modified in your Settings > Integrations list > Slack settings.
Note: You must be in an incident channel to use this feature.
Task Lists
Task lists are predefined lists of multiple tasks that you can asign all at once in incidents.
Like with normal tasks, you can assign a Task List ad-hoc during an incident, but there's an additional capability to automate assignment via Runbooks.
Creating a Task List
- Navigate to Settings > Incidents > Task Lists in the Web UI.
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Click “+ Add task list.”
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On this screen, provide a Name and Description for the Task List.
- Each Task list requires a unique name. Adding a description will also help provide context for the purpose of this task list.
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To add a task to your list, click “+ Add a task”.
- Enter the task summary and description. Select Save task to add this task to the list. A task list must have at least one task before it can be saved.
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When you are done, you can save the task list to view all the tasks.
Assigning a Task List
Like with individual Tasks, you can add a Task List both via the incident Command Center as well as in Slack.
In Slack, the command changes to /fh add task-list.
Automating via Runbooks
The added capability for Task Lists is that you can automatically assign them based on various conditions in a Runbook.
This allows you to flexibly and powerfully assign certain tasks based on various situations. For example, "Assign Security Response Tasks if the Severity is SEC0", or "Always assign Commander Tasks to the Incident Commander", etc.
- Go into a Runbook and click on '+ Add step'.
- Search for "task list" and click Add Task List. Then select the Task List you'd like added to the incident.
- (Optional) If you want to assign the Task List to a specific role, you can select that in the next dropdown.
Note: If assigning to a role, make sure to add a conditional execution rule that ensures the assigned role exists. See image below.
In addition, if you want to have the timeline message about assigning a task list post in the incident channel, you should also add an additional condition, "if Incident Slack Channel exists".
Next Steps
- See how you can completely manage your incidents directly from Slack.
- Learn how to create Follow-Ups to track items to be prioritized post-incident.
- Read more about Runbooks and how they can be used to automate steps of your process.