At Squadcast, we're continually striving to empower our users with the tools they need to handle incidents swiftly and effectively. Today, we're thrilled to announce the launch of our latest feature: Additional Responders. This feature marks a significant step forward in enhancing collaboration and coordination during incident response.

Please Note: This feature is available for Trial, Premium, and Enterprise Plans. Users on these plans will have the ability to add and remove additional responders as needed, directly from the Incident Details page.

What is the Additional Responders Feature?

With Additional Responders, users can invite and notify extra team members during incident resolution. This facilitates a more coordinated and efficient response by bringing in additional expertise. Additionally, users can easily track participants in each incident for transparency and accountability. This feature provides comprehensive visibility into who's involved in each incident beyond just the incident owners.

This feature focuses on enhancing some key areas of the product:

Introducing a new User Role

Squadcast’s Incident Details Page displays Historical Assignees of an incident, providing crucial insights into its handling. This component is referred to as 'Assignee History,' including anyone who was assigned, reassigned, acknowledged, or resolved an incident.

We've introduced a new user role and subsection called 'Additional Responders,' where users can easily add and remove extra support for incidents. These users or squads will serve as added hands for incident response, providing assistance when needed. It's important to note that these Additional Responders are not the primary owners of the incident, and will only aid the actual Assignees.

When Additional Responders are added, they receive email and push notifications for the incident, ensuring everyone stays informed in real-time. Moreover, they are automatically added to the incident watchers list, allowing for seamless coordination.

Adding or removing additional responders is simple and intuitive, but can only be done manually using the ‘plus’ and ‘remove’ signs. Additionally, a button to resend notifications for the incident ensures that important updates reach all relevant parties.

While we're introducing this new feature, the functionality of the Assignee History remains unchanged. These users continue to serve as the primary incident owners.

Benefits for Your Team 

• Enhanced Collaboration: Coordinate efforts seamlessly with the right people involved from the start. 
• Faster Resolution Times: Expedite incident resolution by bringing the right skills to the table quickly. 
• Improved Transparency: Ensure everyone involved has a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities.

How it Works

When additional responders are added to an incident, they receive email and push notifications, and are automatically added to the incident watchers list. This ensures that everyone involved is kept informed and up-to-date on the incident's status.

Adding and Removing Additional Responders

Adding Additional Responders is a cake walk:

1. Choose individual users or squads, with a limit of 100 per call.
2. Those you summon will receive both email and push notifications.

Join Forces:

• Head to the Incident Details page.
• Hit "Add Responders" and cherry-pick your chosen individuals or squads.
• Seal the deal by clicking "Confirm."

You can also trim the Additional Responder Team down:

• Navigate to the Incident Details page.
• Hunt down the remove icon nestled beside each Additional Responder.
• Give it a click to dismiss, then confirm the deletion.

And with that, you're now ready to make the most of the Additional Responders feature! If you need further guidance on utilizing this feature, detailed documentation is available for your reference

Conclusion: Continued Improvement and Collaboration

While this is just the beginning for the Additional Responders feature, we're committed to ongoing refinement and improvement based on user feedback. We aim to provide a seamless and intuitive experience for incident management, empowering teams to respond effectively to any situation.

We're excited about the possibilities this feature unlocks for our users and look forward to hearing your feedback as you start using Additional Responders in your incident response workflows. ​​We encourage you to take Squadcast on a spin via our 14 day free trial and give this new feature a try! Do share your thoughts or feedback in the comments or with our support team. Cheers!