How To View Previous Incidents To Gain Helpful Context During Incident Triage?
Tags: incidentmanagement, squadcastupdates
Published: 2024-06-17 06:20:57

Picture this: you're knee-deep in resolving a P1/P0 incident, urgently seeking answers. What if you could tap into past incidents to get important incident insights and streamline your troubleshooting process? In this blog, we pitch into the practical aspects of leveraging [Squadcast's Past Incidents](https://www.squadcast.com/blog/unveiling-past-incidents-accelerating-incident-resolution-with-historical-context) feature to help you enhance your Incident Management process.

## The Challenge: Reacting vs. Proactively Preventing
Incident resolution can be akin to navigating a maze blindfolded. Without a comprehensive understanding of Past Incidents, you risk reinventing the wheel each time. The absence of a systematic approach often leads to 

- Prolonged downtimes
- Repeated firefighting
- Drain on resources
- Potential knowledge gaps
- Ambiguity in performance evaluation
- Gaps in documentations like [runbooks & playbooks](https://www.squadcast.com/blog/runbook-vs-playbook-whats-the-difference)
- Reactive Incident Management 
- Uninformed decision-making during new incidents
- More context for [stakeholder communication](https://www.squadcast.com/blog/keeping-stakeholders-notified-of-incidents-with-squadcast)

## The Solution: Utilizing Past Incidents Feature  
Past Incidents hold valuable insights that can revamp your Incident Management process. With [Squadcast’s Past Incidents feature](https://www.squadcast.com/blog/unveiling-past-incidents-accelerating-incident-resolution-with-historical-context), you gain access to a wealth of historical incident data. Past occurrences are laid out in a way, allowing you to discern patterns—whether it's a recurring issue or a one-time incident.

_**Read more:** [Suppressing Alert Noise during Scheduled Maintenance](https://www.squadcast.com/blog/suppressing-alert-noise-during-scheduled-maintenance)_

## How to View Past Incidents in Squadcast?
To access [Past Incidents](https://support.squadcast.com/incidents-page/past-incidents?_gl=1*bilx61*_gcl_au*MTI4MzQyMTUyNy4xNzE0Mzc2NDE2LjE0NDg2MjgzNjMuMTcxNjU1MzgzMS4xNzE2NTUzODMw) related to a parent incident, follow these steps:

- Go to the **Incidents List page** and select the desired incident.
- In the **Incident Details page**, navigate to the Details section and locate the Past Incidents tab.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/upkhsuqxca6x9xjrn21u.png)

- By default, you will be shown **5 of the most relevant incidents** that have previously been resolved.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/r36s5d76lx3jb7fzfx7i.png)

- If you want to review Past Incidents from a specific date, click on the **corresponding date square on the heat-map**. 

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/yk73galdm6cpn11b8o8t.gif)

Here are the details shown for the relevant incidents:

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/bw8dgn523tpmdbzu8jss.png)

## Use Cases: Past Incidents Applications
Past Incidents can be useful in various cases:

- **Repetition Analysis:** Instantly gauge the frequency of similar incidents over defined periods _– be it the last seven days, the previous quarter, or beyond_. This information becomes your compass, helping you decide whether you're dealing with a persistent headache or a rare anomaly.
- **Automated Resolution:** For recurrent issues, [Past Incidents](https://www.squadcast.com/blog/unveiling-past-incidents-accelerating-incident-resolution-with-historical-context#past-incident-details) guide you towards automation. As you troubleshoot, consider implementing CI/CD pipelines or Jenkins scripts that proactively address the identified problem. So you can skip manual intervention and let automation be your first responder. Read more on how Squadcast Workflows can help.
- **Post Mortem Replication:** Hunt into Past Incidents with high activity levels. You may uncover post-mortems that hold the key to swift resolutions. By replicating successful resolutions, you sidestep the need for exhaustive troubleshooting, resolving current incidents at an accelerated pace.

## Benefits of Squadcast’s Past Incidents

- By learning from the past, you **eliminate the guesswork and reduce incident resolution times**. 
- You can strategically fine-tune your infrastructure. Proactively make **changes to prevent future incidents**, ensuring a more robust and resilient system.
- Paves the way for **creating automated runbooks and mitigation pipelines**. You’ll be able to respond to repetitive incidents with predefined actions, such as server backups or Prometheus pod restarts, executed seamlessly through outgoing webhooks.

[![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/zg8bml5muvi6vrbdk8lx.png)](https://register.squadcast.com/)

## Practical Path to Agile Resolutions
Information is power. Squadcast's Past Incidents gives you the ability to glance back before moving forward. By extracting actionable insights from historical incidents, you not only resolve current issues faster but also fortify your infrastructure against future disruptions. Afterall, in the tech world, foresight often outshines hindsight. 

This feature is available to everyone who takes Squadcast on a spin via our [14 day free trial](http://register.squadcast.com/)!
‍
_[Squadcast](https://www.squadcast.com/) 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._

[![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/0eiejqo3g4n2q5rnnnw7.png)](http://register.squadcast.com/)