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Quick start

Quick start

Incident Commander adds a full incident-management workflow to WHMCS: declare incidents, post real-time updates, notify clients, schedule maintenance windows, and write post-mortems. This guide covers install, your first incident, and Pro features (notifications / post-mortems).

For WHMCS hosting providers who need service-uptime transparency for their clients.

1. Install and activate

  1. Download the ZIP and extract into your WHMCS root.
  2. WHMCS admin → Setup → Apps & Integrations → Incident Commander → Activate.
  3. Configuration → Addon Modules → tick admin role + license key + Save.
  4. Addons → Incident Commander opens the console.

2. 8-page admin

  • Dashboard: current overall status (operational / degraded / major_outage) + last 5 incidents
  • Components: define your service components (API, Web, DB, Email, ...) each with its own status
  • Incidents: paginated table of every incident
  • Incident detail: single-incident timeline, status updates, notification log
  • Maintenance: scheduled maintenance windows (auto-notify before, auto-start/end)
  • Notifications: email/webhook recipients (Pro)
  • Post-mortems: post-mortem reports (Pro) — RCA / timeline / action items
  • Settings: status page, branding, retention

3. Create your first incident

Incidents → "New incident":

  1. Title + severity (minor / major / critical)
  2. Affected components (multi-select)
  3. Description
  4. Save — recorded in mod_incident_commander_incidents, notifications fire

Detail page lets you "Post Update" repeatedly to drive status: identified / investigating / monitoring / resolved.

4. Status page sync

Every status update auto-writes to the "status page" (public URL clients can see):

  • Current 4-component status
  • 90-day incident history
  • RSS / Atom feed (Pro)

5. Notifications (Pro)

Notifications page:

  • Email: pick recipient list (subscribe by component / by client / everyone)
  • Webhook: POST JSON to external on each state change
  • Slack incoming webhook
  • Status-page badge auto-updates

6. Maintenance windows

Maintenance page:

  • Create future maintenance (start/end time + affected components + description)
  • Auto-notify clients 24/12/1h before
  • Components flip to "under_maintenance" during the window
  • Restored to previous status after end

7. Post-mortems (Pro)

Each resolved incident can spawn a post-mortem:

  • RCA (root cause analysis)
  • Timeline (machine-readable ISO timestamps + descriptions)
  • Impact (affected client count, downtime duration)
  • Follow-up action items

Post-mortems can be public-URL or internal-only.

8. Auto-updates

Dashboard "Check for Updates" panel pulls the latest version; "Install Update" runs the WHMCS standard update flow.

For deeper docs (API endpoints, status-page customisation, notification templates) see the "Full documentation" link on your store dashboard card.