Major Incident workbench — the Collaborate tab

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Major Incident workbench — the Collaborate tab

    The Collaborate tab within the Major Incident workbench enables ServiceNow users to view and manage communication tasks that utilize conference calls as their communication channel. It supports creating, initiating, and managing conference calls directly related to major incident management, facilitating effective collaboration during incident resolution.

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    Key Features

    • Add Communication Plans and Tasks: Users can add new communication plans or create communication tasks within existing plans using the Add and Add Call options.
    • Manage Participants: After saving a plan, participants can be added or removed via the Manage Participants option, including user groups with automatic escalation hierarchies if configured.
    • Conference Call Controls: Initiate, join, and end conference calls directly from the tab. The conference leader can mute, unmute, or remove participants as needed.
    • Task Status Tracking: One-time tasks automatically mark as Complete after the call ends; recurring tasks remain Open with call counts displayed.
    • Participant Status: Active and inactive participants are clearly displayed, helping users track engagement in real-time.
    • Work Notes & Activity Stream: Users can send connect messages at the incident or communication plan level and monitor related activity.
    • Direct Calling Capability: Calls can be started directly to group members if the snmajorincmgmt.notifywebrtcnumber property is configured with a valid voice-capable number.
    • Mute Controls: Mute or unmute all participants simultaneously with available options.
    • Microsoft Teams and Slack Integration: Send notifications and initiate group chats on Microsoft Teams and follow Slack communication workflows, enhancing cross-platform collaboration.

    Practical Application for ServiceNow Customers

    This tab streamlines communication during major incidents by consolidating conference call management within ServiceNow. It improves coordination by allowing incident responders to quickly initiate calls, manage participants, and monitor communication tasks' statuses without leaving the workbench. Integrations with Microsoft Teams and Slack further extend collaboration capabilities.

    Configuring related system properties such as com.snc.iam.conferencecallfollowoncallescalation and snmajorincmgmt.notifywebrtcnumber is essential to enable group escalations and voice call functionality, respectively.

    The Collaborate tab helps you to view and manage communication tasks that use conference as their communication channel.

    Figure 1. View of the Collaborate tab
    The Collaborate tab

    Like the Summary tab, you can add a new communication plan by clicking Add. You can create communication task for an existing plan by clicking Add Call. For more information, see Add-communication-plan-from-mim-workbench. If you want to add or remove recipients from a particular plan after the plan is saved, select Manage Participants.

    To initiate a conference call, select Initiate. If the communication task is a one-time task, then after the call is ended, the status of the task changes to Complete. If task is recurring, the status of the task changes to Open and it displays the number of times the conference call is initiated.
    Note:
    When you add a user group to the conference call, the group itself is added to the call, and the escalation hierarchy is automatically followed once you start the call. Set the com.snc.iam.conference_call_follow_on_call_escalation property to true. For more information about the property, see System properties for On-Call Scheduling.

    Under each task, the Active participant section displays the active participants and the Inactive participant section displays the inactive participants.

    If the call is in progress, the itil user, who has access to the workbench, can join the conference call by clicking Join Call. The participants can also add another user to an ongoing conference call by clicking + Participants. The conference leader can end the conference call by clicking End Call. The conference leader can mute, unmute, or kick an active participant by hovering over the active participant and clicking Mute or remove an active participant.

    Under the Work Notes & Activity section, you can send connect message at incident or incident communication plan level. You can also view the activity stream.

    To initiate a call directly to the group members, select Start a call.

    Start a call

    To start a call, populate the sn_major_inc_mgmt.notify_webrtc_number property with a valid notify number that has voice capability. For user who is already in an active conference call, Start a call is disabled. You can mute or unmute all the participants using the Mute All and Unmute All options.

    To send a Microsoft Teams notification from major incident workbench, see Send a notification from Major incident management workbench. The procedure applies to both the Collaborate and Communicate tabs. To  Initiate Microsoft Teams group chat from MIM workbench, see Initiate Microsoft Teams group chat from MIM workbench.

    For information on process flow for slack communication, see Process flow for Slack communication.

    For information on how to add a collaborative communication task, see Add a collaborative communication task.