Astry - On-Call Management Platform
How-To

How to declare and manage a crisis?

A step-by-step guide to preparing a crisis template, declaring a crisis, following its actions, resolving it and exporting its report.

This page describes, step by step, how to prepare and then manage a crisis in Astry. To understand the concepts used, refer to the Crises page.

What we'll cover:

  • Preparation: positions and crisis template
  • Declaring the crisis
  • Following actions and communicating
  • Resolution and report

Duration: 15 minutes.

Preparation: positions and crisis template

A crisis is prepared in advance. Start by defining the business functions that will be involved during the crisis:

  1. From the main Organization tab, open the Positions page and create the positions you need (for example Crisis manager, Communication officer, Manager). If needed, configure an escalation between positions (for example: an action not completed by the Communication officer after 30 minutes is re-assigned to the Manager).
  2. From the main Teams tab, open the team that will handle the crisis, then the Members menu, and assign these positions to members using the Edit positions button.

Then create a crisis template (Owners only):

  1. From the main Organization tab, open the Templates page (Crisis section), then create a new template and give it a name (for example Payment service outage).
  2. Write the status message, inserting dynamic fields (type / or @): for example Start time, Impacted services, Next update.
  3. Write the closure message in the same way (for example with the Root cause and Corrective actions fields).
  4. Add the actions to carry out during the crisis, from the suggested or custom actions. For each of them, specify whether it is required, its execution order, the responsible position and its alert method.
  5. Adjust the template's notification rules if needed (for example: notify the Manager by SMS if a required action has been unfinished for more than 30 minutes).

Declaring the crisis

When the crisis occurs:

  1. From the Inbox, click Declare a crisis.
  2. Select the Predefined template mode, then the template prepared above.
  3. Fill in the template fields: the status message preview updates automatically.
  4. Check the list of actions (you can remove some, or add custom actions).
  5. Assign the crisis to the team handling it, and add the impacted resources and tags if needed.
  6. Confirm the declaration.

The crisis then appears in the Inbox, a banner flags it at the top of every Astry page, and the holders of the relevant positions are alerted about their actions.

Following actions and communicating

During the crisis, from the crisis page:

  • each person in charge marks their actions as completed (or completes them on behalf of someone else). Unfinished actions trigger reminders, then escalations according to the positions configuration.
  • update the status message regularly, by filling in the template fields, with or without notification
  • use comments to record decisions and progress
  • use Declare a performed action to record an action that was carried out but not planned

If your organization has the Status Page, you can also publish the relevant information for your customers via Publish to the Status Page.

Resolution and report

Once all required actions have been completed:

  1. Click Resolve, then fill in the closure message fields, and check its preview before sending.
  2. Click Export report and choose the PDF format (full report with photos) or CSV (table of events and comments).

This report provides the basis for your post-incident review. Finally, remember to adjust your crisis template based on the lessons learned: missing actions, reminder delays, notification recipients, ...

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