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A war room is a combination of interactive dashboard and notes.

It integrates a custom dashboard being created in real-time combined with collaborative troubleshooting in the form of a focused chat room. While troubleshooting an issue, you can add notes and data that are visible to all the war room participants immediately in a timeline format.  

 The virtual war room helps to:

  • Get everyone on the same page by looking at the same real-time data
  • Keep the focus on metrics that translate to the business value the application delivers
  • Foster communication among a broad audience

  • Identify resolution criteria and assign ownership for resolution tasks

Start a War Room

Start a virtual war room, a collaborative chat room, when you want to troubleshoot an issue on-the-go.

You must have the account-level permission, Create War Rooms to start a War Room.

  1. Start creating a war room using one of the following three options:
    • From Applications  >  Troubleshoot > War Rooms > My Active War Rooms, click Start a War Room.
    • From 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.
    • On the Applications  >  Troubleshoot > Health Rule Violations page, under the JIRA / War Room column, if you have set up the Atlassian JIRA integration, click Start War Room.


On the Jira issue page, from the AppDynamics Incident panel, click Start or Join a War Room associated with this Incident.


  1. Name your war room and click OK if you want to create a new room or select From Template to create a new room using available war room templates. See War Room Templates.
  2. Click Add Widget to add your widgets to the war room. See Widgets. 
  3. Click Save.

You can view all the war rooms you have created under My Active War Rooms tab and edit your widgets anytime through 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.

Save an existing war room as a template while working on it or just before closing it. 

To create a war room template:
  1. In the Actions menu of the current war room using 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 newly created template is now available for reuse in creating other war rooms. You can view all your war room templates under War Rooms >  Templates.

To delete a war room template:
  1. Click War Rooms > Templates.
  2. From the list of war room templates, select the template that you want 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.

To change 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 gives the presenter the opportunity to set up the widgets privately before showing the war room to others.

To end the war room:

Click the End War Room button. 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 window.

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 into the AppDynamics UI, but has been invited to join by an AppDynamics participant. This type of user 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.

To 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. Perform one of the following to view a war room:

  1. Click the link in the invitation that you received to join the war room.
  2. Click Troubleshoot > War Rooms, then the war room that you want to join from the war rooms list.
To invite another participant to the war room:

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

  1. From your active war room, click + | Participants.
  2. From the Invite Users widow, 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 in a browser window.
  4. Click OK to close the Invite Users window.

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

To add a note:
  1. From your active war room, click + | War Room Notes.
  2. On the Enter Notes window, do the following:
    1. Enter your note in the text field that appears.
    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 the Save icon at the top of the war room dashboard.

If the controller is restarted while a war room is in-progress, the war room is saved and can be accessed when the controller comes back up.