BigPanda incidents can be shared through email or integrated channels to notify your team of critical issues, automatically create tickets, or loop in team members who don’t use BigPanda. By default, incidents can be shared through email or SMS, but additional sharing channels can also be configured to fit your incident resolution workflow.

Incidents can be manually shared by users, or you can also use AutoShare rules to send incidents to recipients any time an incident fits particular criteria. Configuring AutoShare rules ensures that all involved team members are notified and escalation steps are taken as soon as an incident is detected.

Once shared, recipients will be updated when key changes happen. This ensures teams collaborating together externally are always working from the latest BigPanda data. Users can unsubscribe from incidents to stop receiving updates.

BigPanda sends information to the subscribed recipients of a share when:

• A maintenance window is updated.
• An incident status has changed.
• An acknowledged value has changed.
• An incident enters a snoozed state.
• An incident enters a flapping state.
• A comment has been added (disabled by default).

Relevant Permissions

Roles with the following permissions can access the Autoshare settings.

Configure Sharing Channels

BigPanda can share incidents through email and SMS without any configuration. Additional sharing channels can be configured by adding collaboration integrations.

BigPanda automatically populates the messages and tickets with incident information, including a link to an Incident Preview Page. As the incident updates in BigPanda, the external messages and tickets will be kept up-to-date.

BigPanda provides built-in integrations to several types of systems, including:

• Ticketing systems such as JIRA and ServiceNow. In BigPanda, the incident shows the current status of the ticket in the target system and provides a direct link to it.
• Messaging services such as Slack. Comments and invitations to the channel can be included as part of the share.
• Task and incident management tools such as Asana and PagerDuty. Bi-directional sync can allow incident comments and resolution to update both systems simultaneously.

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Many integrations with bi-directional sync have special rules about what is shared and how. For more information, see the Integrate with BigPanda documentation.

Integrate Collaboration Tools

Each collaboration tool will need to be integrated with BigPanda.

Many collaboration tools have standard solutions with streamlined configurations.

Collaboration tools are managed in the BigPanda UI within the Integrations tab. See the Collaboration documentation for more information.

To add a collaboration integration:

1. Navigate to the Integrations tab.
2. In the left pane, click New Integration.
3. Click the Collaboration tab or search to find the desired tool.
4. Select the desired integration.
5. Follow the instructions to install and configure your integration.

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Multiple Channels for One Tool

If different teams use unique channels or projects within the same tool, you can create multiple share channels by creating multiple integrations for the same target system.

Rate Limitations

BigPanda uses rate limitations to protect third-party vendors from overload. Each sharing service includes a default quota. The quota counter resets every 24 hours.

If necessary, it may be possible to adjust rate limitations to fit special circumstances or needs.

Roles with the following permissions can access Sharing Quota settings:

To learn more about how BigPanda's permissions work, see the Roles Management documentation.

Rate limitations are managed from the Sharing Quotas settings page.

To request a change in rate limitations:

1. Navigate to Settings > Sharing Quotas.
2. Locate the sharing channel you’d like to adjust.
3. Hover over the Action column, and click Request Change.
4. In the CS messenger popup, add additional details for the reason for change and click the blue arrow or hit Enter.

The Customer Support team then receives your message and will review it as soon as possible.

Custom Integrations

In addition to the standard integrations, you can use email content or the Notifications Webhook to build custom integrations with other messaging, ticketing, or collaboration systems.

Build Webhooks

The Notifications Webhook lets you share incidents with a collaboration tool via a callback URL. The webhook will send incident and alert data to the recipient application, which can process the information based on the business login you configure.

To learn more about using webhooks to create sharing channels, or see available sharing fields and example share payloads, see the Notifications Webhook documentation.

Email-Based Integrations

BigPanda emails and SMS messages are sent using a standard format that can be parsed to populate tickets and messaging in other collaboration tools.

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Incident ID

The BigPanda incident link includes the unique incident ID number as the last 24 characters of the URL. You can parse the email for the ID, and use it as a unique key to help determine if the notification is for a new incident or for an update to an existing one.

Email Subject Format
<User name> shared with you the incident: <Incident subjects>/< Alerts summary>

Email Body Format
<Sharing annotation>
<User name> shared this incident with you.
Details as of: <Last change to incident> <Link to Incident>
Incident Details:
Status: <Incident status>
Started at: <Incident start time>
Source system: <Source system> < - Integration name> (one entry for each source system)
Preview: <Link to incident preview page>
BigPanda: <Link to incident details>
Timeline: <Link to incident timeline>
Service : <Incident subjects>
Check: <Alerts summary>
This incident contains: (<Number of active alerts>) <Status of alerts>
(One entry for each active alert) <Alert status> <Alert source system> <Alert subject>
<Alert name>
<Link to Incident>

SMS Message Format
<Incident status> <Incident subjects>
<Link to BigPanda incident preview page>
<Alerts summary>

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Message Length Limits

BigPanda sends only one SMS message per incident update. To limit the length of the SMS message, incident subjects and the alerts summary may be truncated in the message.

AutoShare Configuration

AutoShare rules set conditions for incidents to automatically share to a specific channel. By notifying and escalating high-priority or team-related incidents, AutoShare dramatically speeds up the resolution process.

AutoShare rules are based on Environments. When an incident enters or updates within an environment, the AutoShare rules for that environment will trigger.

Before setting an AutoShare rule for a channel, first configure an Environment to filter for the desired attributes. To learn more about configuring Environments, see the Manage Environments documentation.

AutoShare rules are managed from within the BigPanda UI at Settings > AutoShare.

Sharing Rules

A new incident will be shared based on the environments that it enters. The incident will be shared with all channels with active rules that it matches.

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AutoShares have options related to delays. Delays allow your team to receive all of the initial information about a system event right away. There are two delay options, the initial delay default of 5 seconds, and the update delay default of 2.5 minutes. This time can be configured to fit your AutoShare workflow. To adjust the AutoShare delay settings, reach out to your BigPanda Account Manager.

When you create a new AutoShare rule or activate a previously disabled rule:

• New incidents are shared automatically according to the rule.
• Existing incidents in the Environment are not shared automatically, but if an existing incident is resolved and then reopened or enters a flapping state, a share is sent.

If an existing incident no longer matches a rule, BigPanda stops sending updates for it. For example, if the incident status changes to Warning and is no longer included in an Environment for critical incidents, the AutoShare rules for that Environment are no longer applied to the incident.

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Exception for Ticketing Systems

When an AutoShare rule creates an auto-populated ticket in a system such as JIRA or ServiceNow, BigPanda continues to send updates to the ticket even if the incident no longer matches the Environment criteria.

If multiple rules match the same incident:

• The incident is shared with all channels in all matching rules.
• The incident is shared only one time per channel, per update. If the incident matches three different rules that email the same contact, the contact receives only one email per update.
• The order of the AutoShare rules does not impact the sharing behavior.
• For an AutoShare to JIRA, the JIRA ticket is populated with the Environment from one of the matching rules. The Environment is selected randomly from the matching rules.
• Inactive rules do not impact active rules.

Create New AutoShare Rules

To create a new AutoShare rule:

1. Navigate to Settings > AutoShare.
2. Click Create AutoShare.
3. In the Choose Environment dropdown, select an Environment to share incidents from.
4. In the Escalate via dropdown, select the sharing channel to share incidents to.
5. Click Next.
6. For email and SMS AutoShares, enter the contact information in the Recipients field. You may enter more than one recipient.
7. (Optional) Enter a note in the Personal Message box to add context each time the AutoShare rule triggers.
   a. The note may be included in the shared message and will appear in the incident’s Activity feed.
8. Click CREATE.

The new AutoShare rule is activated and added to the list.

Manage AutoShare Rules

You can edit, temporarily deactivate, or permanently delete each AutoShare rule you created. You can filter the list of AutoShare rules by entering a search term in the field above the list. Or, by using predefined filtering by environment, channel, recipient, and status.

To manage AutoShare rules:

1. Navigate to Settings > AutoShare. A list of existing AutoShare rules appears.
2. Select the AutoShare rule you wish to edit, activate/deactivate, or delete.
3. Use any of the following options to modify the AutoShare rule:

Next Steps

Learn more about Sharing Incidents

View the list of Collaboration integrations

Learn to navigate the BigPanda Settings page