Enable component subscriptions

Component subscriptions are a great way to ensure that your subscribers are only getting notifications that are relevant to them. Subscribers can pick and choose which components they want to receive notifications about and which they don't.

To enable component subscriptions:

1. Select Subscribers from the left side menu.

2. Select the Options dropdown menu at the top right of the page.

3. Choose Settings from the dropdown menu.

4. Select the option to Allow users to subscribe to individual components.

5. Select Save changes.

The best part about this feature is that we do the magic behind the scenes to figure out who should be messaged about which incidents, and make sure that they receive all of the relevant notifications based on their preferences. When using a Slack subscription, end-users select the components they want to receive notifications for in the Slack channel they chose when they subscribed to the status page.

Usage of Statuspage from a management perspective is exactly the same, and you can open, close, and update incidents whenever you like - we've got your back to make sure your subscribers are always up to date.

A realistic example

To start, let's imagine you have 4 components - Image Processing, API, Management Portal, and Worker Queues.

One day, your database begins to incur unexpected I/O wait and things start to slow down. The Management Portal is very much affected by this - requests are timing out - but other services are still working fine.

1. Click Incidents from the left sidebar.

2. Click Create incident.

3. Create an incident about the timeouts and only select Management Portal as an affected Component.

   1. By default, when you select at least 1 affected Component, the Send notifications checkbox is selected. However, you have the option to deselect that if you do not want to notify subscribers but still want to show users that this incident affects a certain component. For this example, let's assume we want to notify subscribers.

4. Click the box next to Send notifications to select.

5. Click Create.

Upon incident creation, we'll check to see which of your subscribers are subscribed to Management Portal notifications, and we'll shoot them a note about the new incident.

Time goes on, you update the incident a couple more times, and eventually, the database slows to a crawl, making the API slow to respond as well.

At this point, API subscribers need to be notified of this incident.

1. Click Incidents from the left sidebar.

2. Click Update for the ongoing incident.

3. Click Edit next to Components affected.

4. Select API as an affected component and choose the status from the dropdown menu.

5. Click Update.

Behind the scenes, we notice that all of the API subscribers are now affected by this incident, and they haven't been notified of anything yet. We gather all of them up, and send them the most recent incident update you created to let them know that there's an issue.

What your subscribers see

A subscription confirmation email is sent to the subscriber. When they select Confirm subscription they’re taken to the status page. The subscriber then needs to select the Subscribe to updates button, enter their email address, and select Subscribe again. A component selection screen appears, where the subscriber can select which components they want to receive updates for. They’ll Save these preferences and begin receiving updates for those components.

What happens when new components are added?

If a subscriber hasn't tuned their subscription preferences they'll automatically be subscribed to any components. If a subscriber has already tuned their subscriptions, they will not automatically be added to new components.

Impact on existing subscribers

When enabling component subscriptions, existing subscribers will remain subscribed to all of the components that they normally receive notifications for, and will have the ability going forward to manage their subscriptions manually. For audience-specific pages, when a new component is added, a team member should manually subscribe users to that new component.

How users manage their subscription

The confirmation messages and all further communication to that subscriber will contain a link to the subscription management page.

As an admin, you will also have easy access to this page via the management portal and your subscriber list.

Unsubscribe from notifications

If a subscriber wants to unsubscribe or manage their subscription but does not have access to an existing message with a subscription management link, they can modify their subscription settings from the status page the same way they original subscribed.

To do this, they need to go to the status page and click Subscribe, then input their email/phone number. We will recognize that they are already subscribed and they can manage their subscription settings on the next page.

Disabling component subscriptions

If you go to your subscriber settings and unselect Allow users to subscribe to individual components, existing component subscribers are turned into page subscribers. They'll receive notifications for all updates made to the status page instead of component-specific notifications.