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This page provides an overview of virtual war rooms in AppDynamics.

A war room is a combination of interactive dashboard and notes, integrating a real-time custom dashboard with collaborative troubleshooting in a focused chat room. When troubleshooting an issue, you can add notes and data using a timeline that is visible to all war room participants immediately.  

 The virtual war room:

  • Orients everyone to the same page by viewing the same real-time data.
  • Keeps the focus on metrics that translate to the business value the application delivers.
  • Fosters communication among a broad audience.

  • Identifies resolution criteria and assigns ownership for resolution tasks.

Start a War Room

Start a virtual war room or a collaborative chat room when you want to troubleshoot an issue.

You must have account-level permission (Create War Rooms) to start a war room.

  1. Start creating a war room using one of these three options:
    • Navigate to Applications > Troubleshoot > War Rooms > My Active War Rooms, click Start a War Room.
    • Navigate to Applications > Application Dashboard > Events > Actions, click Start a War Room. Access the events list through the Events tab available in many of the built-in dashboards.
    • If you integrated Atlassian JIRA, navigate to Applications > Troubleshoot > Health Rule Violations and click Start War Room under the JIRA/War Room column.
  2. Navigate to JIRA Issue > AppDynamics Incident and click Start or Join a War Room associated with this Incident.
  3. Name your war room and click OK to create a new room, or select From Template to create a new room using available war room templates. See War Room Templates.
  4. Click Add Widget to add your widgets to the war room. See Widgets. 
  5. Click Save.

You can view all the war rooms you created on the My Active War Rooms page, and edit your widgets using the Actions menu.

War Room Templates

You can re-use the layout of an existing war room by saving a war room as a war room template. This can save time in creating new war rooms with numerous widgets. You can save an existing war room as a template while you are working on it, or just before you close it. 

Create a War Room Template

  1. From the Actions menu of the current war room from which you want to create a template, click Save as Template. Alternatively, when you end a war room, select Save as Template.
  2. Provide a name for the template and an optional description.
  3. Click OK.

The new template is now available to create other war rooms. You can view all your war room templates under War Rooms > Templates.

Delete a War Room Template

  1. Click War Rooms > Templates.
  2. From the list of war room templates, select the template to delete.
  3. Click Delete Template and confirm the deletion.

Manage Presenters

The user who starts a war room is the first presenter.

Only the presenter can:

  • Modify the collaboration space to add, delete, and configure widgets.
  • Make any other participant a presenter. There can only be one presenter at a time.
  • Share and stop sharing the war room with other participants.
  • End the war room.

Presenters can also do everything that participants can do.

Change a Presenter

Right-click on any participant name in the participant list and select Make Presenter.

The ability to edit and control sharing of the collaborative dashboard and to end the war room passes to the new presenter. Other participants cannot see the war room until the presenter shares it. This enables the presenter to set up widgets privately before showing the war room to others.

End the War Room

Click End War Room. When prompted, confirm that you want to end it.

Only the presenter can end the war room. A war room is automatically ended after 60 minutes of inactivity. Inactivity means no participants are viewing the war room pane.

Manage Participants

Everyone who has joined the war room but who is not currently a presenter is a participant. A participant can be:

  • An AppDynamics participant is an authenticated UI user with access to the AppDynamics account that is hosting the war room.
  • A guest participant does not log in to the AppDynamics UI, but has been invited to join by an AppDynamics participant. This user type functions as an anonymous, read-only participant.

AppDynamics participants can:

  • View a war room to which they have been invited.
  • Invite other participants.
  • Add notes.
  • Start a new war room, if the participant has Create War Rooms permission.

Guest participants can view a war room to which they have been invited.

View a War Room

You can view only the war rooms in which you are a presenter or a participant. The list does not display all the war rooms currently in progress on the Controller.

To view a war room, you should have created one, got invited to one, or have access to the shared URL available to anonymous users.

To access a war room, either:

  • Click the link in the invitation that you received to join the war room.
  • Click Troubleshoot > War Rooms, and then select the war room to join from the war rooms list.

Invite Another Participant to the War Room

Send a link to invite another participant to the war room: 

  1. From your active war room, click + | Participants.
  2. From the Invite Users pane, copy the URL for joining this War Room.
  3. Email or SMS the link to the persons whom you are inviting, with instructions to click the link from a browser.
  4. Click OK to close the Invite Users pane.

After clicking the link, the recipient is invited to log in as an AppDynamics participant or as an anonymous guest.

Add a Note

  1. From your active war room, click + | War Room Notes.
  2. From the Enter Notes pane:
    1. Enter your note in the text field.
    2. (Optional) Qualify your note as good or bad.
    3. Click Post.

Automatic Save, Synchronize, and Archive a War Room

The war room is automatically saved and all participants' views of it are synchronized whenever the presenter makes a modification to the dashboard. The saving and synchronizing happens continually and is transparent to the participants when it occurs. In addition, the presenter can always force a save and sync manually by clicking Save at the top of the war room dashboard.

If you restart the Controller while a war room is in progress, the war room is saved and you can access it after the Controller comes back online.