War room troubleshooting

Most war room problems come down to the chat connection: it isn’t allowed to create a channel, or its credential has gone stale. Both show up before an incident if you look, which is the point of the banner below.

”Reconnect Slack to open war rooms”

KloudMate checks the chat channel’s permissions when you pick it in the settings, and again when you open the Start war room dialog. When something is missing, it shows this banner with the exact scopes listed, and keeps Start war room disabled.

Add Workflows to the Slack connection under Settings → Connections, then reconnect it. The setup page walks through it and lists what each scope is for.

Note

The check in the settings always asks for the private-channel scope, groups:write. If you open public rooms, it can report groups:write as missing while your rooms open fine. Check Private room before acting on that one line.

Teams has no scope banner. A Teams room needs the KloudMate app in the team, with the team permissions it asked for when it was added. If someone removed the app, the war room settings say so, and the team shows App removed under Settings → Connections. A team owner adds the app back to the team, and rooms open again. See Microsoft Teams Integration.

The chat connection needs attention

If the connection is listed as anything other than Verified, war rooms are the first thing to break, because opening one takes more permissions than posting a message.

Status	What it means for war rooms
Needs reconnect	The grant is dead or too narrow. Rooms won’t open until you reconnect. Hover the status for the reason.
Revoked	The provider refused the credential the last time something used it. Reconnect or re-enter it.
Degraded	The last check failed. Rooms may still open, since the check and the room use different calls. Re-check it.
Disabled	Someone switched the connection off. Nothing opens until it’s back on.

Re-check can clear Revoked, but only a reconnect clears Needs reconnect. The full list of statuses and reconnect reasons is on Manage a connection.

A rule should have opened a room and didn’t

Rooms open in the background, so give it a few seconds before you call it broken.

If nothing appears, open the incident and click Start war room. The dialog runs the same permission check and shows you the reason: a scope gap in the banner, a channel name that’s taken on the name field, or a credential error in a message. Fixing it there fixes the automatic path too.

Also worth checking: the room only opens on an escalation step’s first pass, and a routing rule only opens one for incidents it creates. Neither opens a room for an incident that already existed.

A connection isn’t in the meeting picker

A new meeting per incident lists connections granted for Meetings. Google Meet and Zoom carry that grant when you connect them, so a connection that’s missing from the picker was either made before this existed or had the grant removed. Open it under Settings → Connections, click Edit, and add Meetings under Can be used for. If it’s then marked Needs reconnect, reconnect it.

Saving a connection that can’t create meetings is refused with connection '<provider>' is not connected for meetings.

The room opened without a Join Call button

A call provider that fails doesn’t hold up the room. KloudMate opens the channel, invites everyone, and leaves the call off the card.

Open the incident, click the edit icon on Conference call, and paste a Meeting link. The card picks it up, and so does the channel topic in Slack. Then look at why the provider failed:

• The connection selected under A new meeting per incident was deleted, switched off, or is Needs reconnect or Revoked. Removing the KloudMate app at Zoom’s end leaves the connection in exactly that state.
• The connection lost its Meetings grant, so the setting no longer points at anything usable.

KloudMate doesn’t retry the meeting for an open room, so adding the link by hand is the fix for the incident in front of you.

Zoom calls cut out after 40 minutes

The KloudMate app was installed from a Basic Zoom account, and every war room meeting is created as the account that installed it. The Zoom connection shows Degraded with the account type in its error, something like ops@example.com is a Zoom type 1 account.

Upgrade that Zoom user to Licensed and click Re-check, or connect Zoom again as a Licensed user and select the new connection. See Change the Zoom user that hosts meetings. Meetings created after that carry no time limit.

Someone wasn’t invited

In Slack, KloudMate matches people by email address: the address on their KloudMate account has to match their Slack account. When it can’t find a match, that person is listed under Could not add on the card and tagged Unmapped on the incident panel, with the reason on hover.

Two things cause nearly all of these. The addresses genuinely differ, which you fix at one end or the other. Or the connection can’t read email addresses at all, which is the users:read.email scope, and shows up as the banner above.

Invite them to the channel yourself for the incident at hand. Once they’re matched, KloudMate remembers the pairing for later rooms.

In Teams, the card says why:

• Not in this team: they aren’t members of the team, so they can’t see the room’s channel. A team owner adds them to the team. KloudMate can’t add people to a team.
• Not linked to Teams: their Microsoft sign-in name isn’t their KloudMate email address, and they haven’t linked their Teams account yet. To link, they click a button on the card and choose Link my account. Later rooms mention them.

That name is taken

You get this on the name field when you’ve typed a name another channel already holds. Choose another, or clear the field and let KloudMate name the room from your template. Generated names aren’t rejected: KloudMate adds a short suffix and opens the room.

The room was archived while we were still using it

A room closes when the delay under After the incident resolves runs out and the incident is still resolved. Reopening the incident inside the delay keeps the room open, in Slack and in Teams. If you resolve it again, though, the close scheduled by the first resolve still runs at its original time, so the room can close sooner than the full delay after the second resolve.

In Slack, unarchive the channel to carry on in it. Starting the war room again returns the same archived room rather than creating a second one. A closed Teams room is renamed closed-<name> and deleted 7 days later. A team owner can restore a deleted channel in Teams for 30 days.

If this keeps happening, raise the delay under After the incident resolves, or set it to Keep the room open and archive rooms yourself with Archive war room on the incident panel.

A Teams room won’t open

• The team is near its channel limit. Teams allows 1,000 channels per team and counts deleted channels for 30 days. KloudMate stops opening rooms 100 channels short of that. Delete channels you don’t need, or point war rooms at a channel in another team.
• The settings keep rooms open. Teams rooms need a delay under After the incident resolves. Keep the room open works only for Slack.
• The war room channel isn’t connected any more. Someone removed it from KloudMate, deleted it in Teams, or disconnected the team. Pick another channel under Where rooms open and save.

A Teams room is missing things a Slack room has

Teams rooms have no Run RCA button and no timeline replies. Notes you add from the card are posted as replies under it. Private room doesn’t apply: a Teams room is always a standard channel that everyone in the team can see.

Related

• Set up war rooms: the permissions each provider needs.
• War rooms overview: what the card shows and what each button does.
• Connections: connection statuses, re-check, and reconnect.