Squid Alerts Release Notes

December 14, 2021

  • Tertiary On-Call - Some teams don't just have a primary and secondary on-call and wanted a third tier to backup their teams. You can now schedule a tertiary on-call resource.

December 6, 2021

  • Day of Week Recurring Schedules - When setting up a recurring on-call schedule, you can now select the specific days of the week. For example, repeat every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

August 14, 2021

  • Partial India Support - Added the ability for India users to receive SMS and phone calls to their phone numbers.

August 14, 2021

  • Partial Australian Support - Added the ability for Australian users to receive SMS and phone calls to their phone numbers.
  • Improved Alert History - Provide additional details on alert routing from the team alerts screen.

July 24, 2021

  • Specified On-Call Auto Schedule Rotations - The standard auto-scheduling looks at on-call over the last few rotations and then picks whomever has been on-call least (followed by alphabetically when all else is equal).

    We have added a new feature that allows you to pick the exact rotation to follow when auto scheduling. From the Auto Schedule On-Call modal on the team calendar, there is a new option to enable "Specify Rotation Order". When this is selected you'll need to configure the order under the "Configure On-Call Order" screen. This method only looks at the last rotation and then plans the next rotation accordingly.
  • Manager On-Call - In addition to primary and secondary on-call schedules, you can now specify a manager on-call for your team.
  • Archive Old On-Call Schedules - To improve performance, we are now archiving old on-call schedules. Archived on-call schedules are not currently available in the UI, but if you need 'em, we got 'em.
  • On-Call Generation Bug Fix - Fixed issue with automatic on-call generation when the start time does not match existing on-call start times.

July 3, 2021

  • Outlook On-Call Calendar Feed - Do you want to see your on-call calendar in Outlook? Now you can! Just go to https://www.squidalerts.com/team/{team_id}/calendar/outlook.ics

May 29, 2021

  • Upcoming On-Call Reminders - Users can now receive an email reminder when they're about to be on-call. This setting can be found on the user's settings / profile page.
  • Improved Email Formatting - The emails used to look like garbage in Outlook due to the lack of margin and padding support. It should be pretty now.

May 17, 2021

  • Listen to Voicemail Alerts - When a team has an inbound phone number and live call routing is disabled, incoming callers leave a voicemail which gets transcribed and converted to an alert. Sometimes, this transcription is lacking, so now you can listen to the original audio from the alert.
  • Switching Teams - Maintain the page (e.g. incidents) you're on when you switch between teams.

May 10, 2021

  • Auto On-Call Scheduling Enhancements - Improvements to automated on-call scheduling for monthly on-call rotations.

May 3, 2021

  • Regex Routing Conditions - Routing rules are used to decide which alerts should be converted to incidents, forwarded, or ignored. You can now match fields in the alert using regular expressions. Exact matches, contains, starts with, ends with, etc. are still available if you're not a regex pro.
  • Duplicate Incident Routing Rule - Before executing the routing rules on an alert, you can see if there's already active incident with the same title. If so you can choose to either ignore the alert, associate the alert with the existing incident, or just process the routing rules as normal. To avoid breaking changes, duplication checks are disabled for each team by default.

April 26, 2021

  • Notification Usage Report - How many notifications have you sent this month? Well, you can finally answer this question now. Admins should see a new section under their company for Notification Usage.

April 19, 2021

  • Specific Managers in Escalation Chain - You now have the option to choose managers in addition to team managers as a specified resource in your escalation chain. When choosing Specific Team Member, the drop down will include managers with a (Manager) tag added to the end.

March 15, 2021

  • Export Incidents to CSV - The the company-wide incident screen, you can now export your incidents to a CSV file. Why? Because someone asked for it and that's what we do!

March 1, 2021

  • Zapier Integration - Zapier supports thousands of apps like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Trello, and more. In just a few minutes, you can set up automated workflows (they call them Zaps) that allow Squid Alerts to integrate with a variety of tools. Currently, you can pull the latest incidents. We'll be adding support for pushing new alerts and incidents from Zapier shortly.

    Check it out on Zapier!

February 22, 2021

  • New Company Verification Process - New companies are now required to verify their SMS phone number before sending any notification or reserving inbound phone numbers in Squid Alerts.

February 15, 2021

  • Create New Incidents - Incident no longer have to be generated from an alert. On the team's incidents page, my incidents, or the company wide incidents page there is now a button for "New Incident". Any incident in the New status will follow the team's escalation chain and send notifications. Incidents created with another status will not be processed by the escalation chain.
  • UI Improvements - Added assigned user column on the team and company incidents screens, removed padding on mobile, improve button color consistency.

February 8, 2021

  • Release Notes - You're looking at it.
  • My Incidents Screen - Users can now see and filter on all incidents that have been assigned to them. From the profile menu in the top right of the screen, select "My Incidents".
  • Bulk User Import - Administrators can add users to Squid Alerts by uploading an Excel file. The file provides options for name, email address, phone number, role, and whether or not the user should receive an invitation email. Bulk import is accessed on the Admin > Users screen.

February 1, 2021

  • Inbound SMS - Teams that have inbound phone numbers can now receive SMS messages. Inbound SMS messages can either be converted to an alert which will be processed by the team's routing rules (converted to an incident by default) or they can be directly forwarded to whomever is on-call.

January 25, 2021

  • Two-Factor / Multi-Factor Authentication - Administrators can require users in their company to have a secondary authentication mechanism when they login to Squid Alerts. Users logging in for the first time will be required to configure and verify their phone number to receive SMS messages. Each time they login, they will receive a temporary access code over SMS to verify their identity.
  • Team Links - Team managers can now add links to their team's dashboard. Links are a simple way for your team to share commonly used sites such as internal documentation.

January 18, 2021

  • Password Requirements - Administrators can now define custom password requirements for their company. Options include minimum password length and whether the password requires an uppercase, lowercase, numeric, or symbol. Existing passwords will not be affected until they are changed by the user.

January 11, 2021

  • Skipped Reason - Now, when you see a notification was skipped in the esclations of an incident, a reason is provided. Current reasons include: no resources for the stage (e.g. no one is on-call), the user was set to do not disturb, communication method not configured for the user (they haven't setup their phone number yet), flood protection limit reached, or your trial is expired.
  • Alternate Team Escalation - Some companies have a dedicated team that handles off hour incidents. Now team managers can setup another team's primary or secondary on-call in their escalation chain. If someone from another team acknowledges the incident, the incident will remain in the original team's queue.
  • Additional Country (Spain) - Partial functionality is now available in the Spain (+34) country code. Notification counts may be more due to increased costs of sending calls and SMS messages to Spain. Teams cannot currently reserve Spanish phone numbers.

January 4, 2021

  • All Incidents Screen - Users can now see and filter on all incidents across multiple teams. From the company menu, select "Incidents".
  • Additional Country (United Kingdom) - Full functionality is now available in the UK (+44) country code.