Public communication

A public update points to an incident, names its audience and records the person who approved the message. Its message and publication time answer what the team said and when. The incident record supplies the affected service, investigation state and recovery timing. Keeping the message attached to that record helps the reviewer check that external wording matches the operating facts.

The communications reviewer decides whether a message is intended for Public or Subscribers. Those are different audiences and should be selected deliberately. An internal incident update is useful for the team, but it does not substitute for a reviewed external message. When a customer asks what happened, the public update should explain the effect and next expected communication in language they can act on.

• Incident context. Link each message to the incident it describes.
• Review. Name the person approving the final external wording.
• Publication record. Keep the chosen audience and publication time with the message.

Agree who writes, reviews and records public updates. The reviewer needs a path to check the incident status and the affected component before approving language. Decide what belongs in a public update when the cause is still under investigation. A clear effect and next checkpoint are more useful than a confident cause that has not been established.

Decide where the message will be displayed and how subscribers will receive it. A public hosting endpoint and notification delivery are connections to configure. Keep the publication record aligned with the actual external communication, including when a message is edited or a follow-up is sent. The operations team should know which person is responsible for checking that the display matches the approved words.

A component is marked partial outage after some customers cannot open reports. The incident coordinator records the investigation and the service owner confirms the visible effect. The communications reviewer checks the proposed message against those facts, approves the wording and records an update for the Public audience. The reviewer checks that the recorded publication time matches when the external message became current. A later update can point to the same incident and describe recovery without hiding the earlier statement.

Before the final message, the coordinator records the actual resolution on the incident and the service owner checks component status. The reviewer can then state that service has recovered, using the incident’s recorded outcome. The team can compare the public chronology with internal updates if questions arise about what was known at each point.

• Public messages — Read incident-linked messages and their publication times.
• Incident history — Check internal chronology before approving external wording.
• Degraded components — See which customer-facing areas need an explanation.

Use the public status cycle to rehearse review and publication. Begin with a real incident response and confirm permissions in roles.