Optimizing Incident Management: Effective Stakeholder Communication with Squadcast

When a critical system goes down, every minute counts. Amid the chaos, it's easy to overlook a crucial aspect of Incident Management: keeping stakeholders informed. However, neglecting stakeholder communication can have disastrous consequences, including misinformation, delayed decisions, and frustration.

Effective stakeholder communication is essential for ensuring a coordinated, efficient, and transparent response to incidents. It helps mitigate the impact of the incident and supports the organization's recovery and resilience. But how can you keep stakeholders like the CEO, CTO, COO, and other business units informed while managing a critical incident?

That's where Squadcast comes in. This powerful tool helps you manage incidents and keep stakeholders informed through hassle-free access to stakeholder notifications and Status Page capabilities. In this blog, we'll dive deep into all the features that Squadcast offers for stakeholder management, ensuring you can keep your stakeholders informed and aligned during critical incidents.

What Are Stakeholders?

Stakeholders are anyone who has an interest in the outcome of an incident. They can be internal folks like your CTO, product managers, customer support, and customer success teams. Or they can be external like your customers or clients. Keeping them informed is key to smooth incident management.

In Squadcast, internal stakeholders include key individuals within your organization, while external stakeholders refer to your valued customers who use your products and services and may be impacted by unexpected incidents. Squadcast provides robust features for effectively managing notifications for both internal and external stakeholders, ensuring that everyone stays informed about the progress of the incident.

By utilizing these features and automation capabilities, you can ensure that all stakeholders remain updated on the incident's status. This allows engineers to concentrate on addressing critical issues and resolving incidents efficiently, without the added burden of constantly updating everyone.

Broad Features of Stakeholder Management in Squadcast

Squadcast has a bunch of features to help you manage stakeholders. From creating groups to sending out updates, it makes sure everyone knows what's going on. This is crucial to avoid confusion and keep things running smoothly during incidents.

Stakeholder Groups

• These are groups of stakeholders within your team designed to receive notifications about incident progress. They serve as a collective unit, making it easier to manage communications.
• Creation and Management: Creating and managing these groups is straightforward. Go to Settings, navigate to Teams, and select the team where you want to create the group. Ensure there's at least one stakeholder in the team. Input the name of the group and the stakeholders you wish to include in the group, then click Save. You can manage these groups by adding or removing members as needed.
• Limitations: Stakeholder Groups can't be added to escalation policies, on-call schedules, or as incident responders. They are primarily for notification purposes. Depending on your plan, you can create up to 10 groups with 10 members each in the Premium plan and up to 15 groups with 15 members each in the Enterprise plan.

Incident Watchers

• Incident Watchers are stakeholders who get real-time updates on incident progress without being directly involved in the incident resolution process. They are crucial for keeping key individuals informed without overwhelming the incident response team.
• Adding Watchers: You can add stakeholders as incident watchers via @mentions in incident notes to ensure they receive real-time updates. Simply mention the stakeholder group or individual in the incident notes, and they will be added as watchers.

StatusPage Updates

• StatusPage is a public page that provides real-time updates on service status. It's an essential tool for transparent communication with both internal and external stakeholders.
• Usage: StatusPage is used to keep stakeholders informed about incidents. It's a centralized place where stakeholders can check the status of services and get updates on ongoing incidents.
• Notifications: Stakeholders can subscribe to updates via email or webhooks. This ensures they receive timely notifications about any changes in service status without needing to constantly check the page.

Service Graphs

• Service Graphs are visual representations of service dependencies. They help stakeholders understand how different services are interconnected and the impact of incidents on various services.
• Benefits: By using Service Graphs, stakeholders can quickly grasp the scope of an incident and its potential impact on the overall service architecture. This visual tool aids in better decision-making and faster incident resolution.

Features and Actions

Adding Stakeholders to Squad

• Steps: Adding stakeholders to a team involves a few simple steps. First, ensure the user role associated with the stakeholder has the required permissions. Navigate to Settings, then Teams, and select the team where you want to add the stakeholder. Assign the stakeholder a read-only role and add them to the team.

  1. Navigate to Settings: Click on Settings in the sidebar.
  2. Select Teams: Click on Teams from the secondary navigation menu.
  3. Choose the Team: Select the team where you want to add the stakeholder.
  4. Add Stakeholder: Click on Add Stakeholder, enter the stakeholder's details, and assign them a read-only role.
  5. Save: Click Save to finalize the addition.

• Permissions: Stakeholders have view-only access and can't be added to schedules or escalation policies. This ensures they can stay informed without interfering with the incident resolution process.

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Roles: Squadcast offers different roles, including Admin, User, and Observer. Each role has specific permissions and access levels.

1. Admin: Full access to all settings and configurations.
2. User: Can respond to incidents, customize their profile, and set notification rules.
3. Observer: View-only access, ideal for stakeholders who need to stay informed without taking action.

Steps to Assign Roles:

1. Navigate to Settings: Click on Settings in the sidebar.
2. Select Users: Click on Users from the secondary navigation menu.
3. Choose the User: Select the user you want to assign a role to.
4. Assign Role: Choose the appropriate role (Admin, User, Observer) from the dropdown menu.
5. Save Changes: Click Save to finalize the role assignment.

Stakeholder Role: Stakeholders are typically assigned the Observer role, which grants view-only access. This role ensures that stakeholders can monitor incident progress without being involved in the resolution process. They can view incident details, timelines, and updates but cannot modify or escalate incidents.

Stakeholder Groups vs. Incident Watchers

Stakeholder Groups - Creation and Management:

1. Navigate to Settings: Go to Settings in your Squadcast dashboard.
2. Select Teams: Choose the team where you want to create the group.
3. Create Group: Click on Create Group, input the name of the group, and add stakeholders.
4. Save Changes: Click Save to finalize the group.

Adding Incident Watchers:

1. Open Incident Notes: Go to the incident you want to update.
2. @Mention Stakeholder: In the incident notes, use the @mention feature to add the stakeholder group or individual.
3. Save Changes: Click Save to ensure the watchers are added.

‍Comparison: Stakeholder Groups are best for broad notifications, while Incident Watchers are suited for real-time, incident-specific updates. Both features ensure stakeholders stay informed without overwhelming the incident response team.

StatusPage and Service Graphs

• StatusPage: Setting up and managing StatusPages is crucial for stakeholder communication. It provides a centralized place for updates and ensures transparency.some text

  1. Navigate to Settings: Click on Settings in the sidebar.
  2. Select StatusPages: Click on StatusPages from the secondary navigation menu.
  3. Create StatusPage: Click on Create StatusPage, enter the necessary details, and customize it as needed.
  4. Save: Click Save to finalize the StatusPage.

• Service Graphs: These graphs help stakeholders understand service dependencies and the impact of incidents. They are a valuable tool for visualizing the service architecture and making informed decisions.some text

  1. Navigate to Service Graphs: Click on Service Graphs in the sidebar.
  2. Create Service Graph: Click on Create Service Graph, map out the dependencies, and link relevant services.
  3. Save: Click Save to finalize the Service Graph.

Additional Features Leading to Stakeholders

Webforms

• Definition: Webforms are forms for reporting incidents. They provide a structured way for stakeholders to report issues and ensure all necessary information is captured.
• Usage: Stakeholders can use webforms to report issues and receive updates. This feature streamlines the incident reporting process and ensures timely notifications.some text
  1. Navigate to Webforms: Click on Webforms in the sidebar.
  2. Create Webform: Click on Create Webform, enter the necessary details, and customize it as needed.
  3. Save: Click Save to finalize the Webform.

Notifications

• Types: Squadcast offers various modes of notifications, including email and push notifications. These ensure stakeholders receive timely updates on incidents.
• Customization: You can customize notifications to suit the needs of different stakeholders. This ensures they receive relevant information without being overwhelmed by unnecessary details.some text
  1. Navigate to Notifications: Click on Notifications in the sidebar.
  2. Customize Notifications: Select the type of notification (email, push, etc.) and customize the content and frequency.
  3. Save: Click Save to finalize the notification settings.

Conclusion

Squadcast offers a robust suite of features for managing stakeholders during incidents. From creating stakeholder groups to using StatusPage for real-time updates, Squadcast ensures everyone stays informed, avoiding confusion and keeping operations smooth.

Effective stakeholder communication is vital during incidents. It prevents misinformation, reduces panic, and speeds up decision-making. Squadcast's features are designed to keep everyone in the loop, ensuring efficient incident management.

Ready to streamline your incident management? Explore Squadcast's features through a free trial or demo. Experience how Squadcast can enhance your communication and incident response. Get started today!

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Squadcast is an Incident Management tool that’s purpose-built for SRE. Get rid of unwanted alerts, receive relevant notifications and integrate with popular ChatOps tools. Work in collaboration using virtual incident war rooms and use automation to eliminate toil.