Primary Scope: To ensure Operations staff understand how to send incident communications effectively.
Secondary Scope: To ensure effective communications of incidents to the business.
Trigger events: A P1 or P2 incident being raised by telephone or escalated to the Service Desk.
The primary major incident communications method is email. It is important to send this to our interested parties within the business, those whom are affected by the incident. The Service Catalogue contains all of the details for our services and distribution lists; however, the second table below contains has a quick reference D-LIST. The email template you need to send is attached, as a file at the bottom.
You must send the email as from service desk. (ensure that you have rights to do so) and not your own email address.
The table below contains the fields which you will need to populate in the email template. Remember your audience, they are not technically minded, limit technical detail as much as you can and aim for simple and understandable language to explain the issue.
If you have to place the telephone system in to emergency mode, follow these instructions in the link here.
Requirement |
Reason |
Subject: |
The subject of the communication should describe the failure but be understandable to target audience. |
Incident Reference: |
A master ticket should be raised and the ticket number stated here. |
| Time Reported: | The declared time of incident, this is determined at the time of logging or the incident manager. |
| Time Resolved: | The time the incident is declared resolved by the incident manager. |
Centre/ Department Impact: |
The impact should describe how this incident affects our users and which teams and departments are affected. |
Latest update: |
This should describe the current state of the incident and what actions we as a team are doing. |
Workaround: |
Describe clearly what options are available to ensure teams can continue to work (if any) |
Resolution: |
When the incident is resolved describe what the applied fix or |
| SERVICE | Distribution List for Comms | Who's Affected? | Business Impact on Failure | Operational Hours of Affected Team(s) | Product Owner |
| Daily Disbursement (CPFBACS) | regulatoryfinancemanagers@stepchange.org CAMteamleaders@stepchange.org |
CAM, Creditor Relationships | No payments going out to creditors, potential breaches of retaining client money if we go beyond threshold | 09:00 - 17:00 Mon - Fri | CAM, Glen Tillotson, Lee Insley |
| Exchange | All Departments | Unable to send or receive emails, comms not going out |
08:00 - 20:00 Mon - Fri, Debt Advice 08:00 - 16:00 Sat, Client Support 09:00 - 14:00 Sat | Infrastructure, Kuljit Hundal | |
| PDD/DDE | PDDUsers@stepchange.org; stepchangemanagers@stepchange.org; IT ITLeadershipTeam@stepchange.org; TeamLeaders@stepchange.org; SDTeam@stepchange.org; CAMteamleaders@stepchange.org | CAM, Client Support | Main Direct Debit maintenance system used for the charity to set up/amend client DD's unavailable | 08:00 - 18:00 Mon - Fri, Client Support 09:00 - 14:00 Sat | Dev Finance, Lee Insley |
| Pulse | PulseUsers@stepchange.org | All Pulse Users | Telephony and Online system to provide full Debt Advice, run Decision Logic and produce Client PAPs. Additionally used in early stages of Activations | Pega, Hannah Fletcher | |
| WebSeries | regulatoryfinancemanagers@stepchange.org; Clientsupportteam@stepchange.org |
Regulatory Finance, Client Support | Unable to complete incoming and outgoing BACS activities | 08:00 - 18:00 Mon - Fri, Client Support 09:00 - 14:00 Sat | Bottomline, CAM, Glen Tillotson, Lee Insley |
| Daily Reconciliation/Financial portal | regulatoryfinancemanagers@stepchange.org | Regulatory Finance | Breach, unable to complete reconciliations | 09:00 - 17:00 Mon - Fri | CAM, Glen Tillotson, Lee Insley |
| Barclaycard Portal | regulatoryfinancemanagers@stepchange.org | Regulatory Finance | Possible breach, no information coming through from clients plans | 09:00 - 17:00 Mon - Fri | CAM, Glen Tillotson |
| Barclays.net | regulatoryfinancemanagers@stepchange.org; FinanceAndReportingTeam@stepchange.org |
Finance, Regulatory finance | Breach, unable to complete reconciliations , day to day internal financial processes | 09:00 - 17:00 Mon - Fri | CAM, Glen Tillotson |
| Breathing Space | Gov.uk | ||||
| CallCopy | callcopyusers@stepchange.org | All Operational Departments | Calls not getting recorded, TLs unable to complete call evaluations | 08:00 - 20:00 Mon - Fri, Debt Advice 08:00 - 16:00 Sat, Client Support 09:00 - 14:00 Sat | Nice Uptivity, Dev Client Sols, Adam Hargreaves |
| DCS | DCSUsers@stepchange.org; stepchangemanagers@stepchange.org; ITLeadershipTeam@stepchange.org; Team Leaders TeamLeaders@stepchange.org; SDTeam@stepchange.org Clientsupportteam@stepchange.org; CAMteamleaders@stepchange.org; CorrespondenceTeam@stepchange.org | CAM, Client Support, Complaints, Correspondence, Customer Services, Debt Advice, Digital Support, Financial Solutions, Ireland and Mortgage, Operations Support, Plan Activations, Plan Referrals, QMT, Real Time, Settlements, DRO Team | Unable to access client data, can't write to Webseries with updates to budgets. Master copy of client data unavailable | 08:00 - 20:00 Mon - Fri, Debt Advice 08:00 - 16:00 Sat | Dev Client Solutions, Adam Hargreaves |
| KeyIVR | Clientsupportteam@stepchange.org; CAMteamleaders@stepchange.org |
CAM, Client Support, Complaints, Customer Services, Ireland and Mortgage, Settlements | Clients unable to complete payments over the phone | 08:00 - 18:00 Mon - Fri | KeyIVR, Dev Finance, Lee Insley |
| Office | everyone at stepchange | All Departments | Teams, Email, Office applications, Word and Excel templates unavailable to open in native apps | 08:00 - 20:00 Mon - Fri, Debt Advice 08:00 - 16:00 Sat, Client Support 09:00 - 14:00 Sat | Microsoft, Kuljit Hundal |
| Pulse Chat | Hannah Fletcher | Pull info from AD group | Unable to give full advice on chat function/may lead to more calls | Pega, Hannah Fletcher | |
| RBS Bankline | regulatoryfinancemanagers@stepchange.org | VA, Equity Release, Regulatory Finance | VA and Equity release unable to make payments/release money | CAM, Glen Tillotson | |
| VipreMail | Users would stop receving external email. | Infrastructure, Kuljit Hundal | |||
| Client Dissatisfaction Register | All Operational Departments | Unable to access client complaint records | 08:00 - 20:00 Mon - Fri, Debt Advice 08:00 - 16:00 Sat, Client Support 09:00 - 14:00 Sat | Dev Client Solutions, Adam Hargreaves | |
| sFTP | External Creditors | Creditors props unable to use service | Dev Client Solutions, Adam Hargreaves | ||
| UCM | regulatoryfinancemanagers@stepchange.org | Regulatory Finance | Holding area for monies, used by CAM to workout which bank account to allocate money to client | 09:00 - 17:00 Mon - Fri | CAM, Glen Tillotson, Lee Insley |
| StarLeaf | Any scheduled/impromptu meetings (primarily used by exec team) would be affected | StarLeaf | |||
| AML SmartSearch | PlanActivationsTeamLeaders@stepchange.org | Plan Activations | Clients unable to start DMP | 08:00 - 18:00 Mon - Fri | Dev Client Solutions, Adam Hargreaves |
| ALICE | Clientsupportteam@stepchange.org Cardiff@stepchange.org; GlasgowTeamLeaders@stepchange.org | Client support, Advocacy | Advisors rely on the uniform templates this provides, but can still work without it. | 09:00 - 17:00 Mon - Fri | Debt Advice, Irfan Afsar |
| Client Retention | Clientsupportteam@stepchange.org; CAMteamleaders@stepchange.org | Client Support, External Creditors, CAM | Client Retention app which uses profiling based on their payments to the charity e.g. if payments are missed a letter is automatically sent to the client. Pre-disbursement process which allows late payments within a month - queued within the application. | 08:00 - 18:00 Mon - Fri, Client Support 09:00 - 14:00 Sat | Dev Finance, Lee Insley |
| Creditor Matrix | PlanActivationsTeamLeaders@stepchange.org | Plan Activations | 08:00 - 18:00 Mon - Fri | Plan Activations, Arron High, Zahida Tekin | |
| Creditor Web | CAMteamleaders@stepchange.org CorrespondenceTeam@stepchange.org |
CAM, Correspondence, Customer Services | Portal unusable. Creditors' decisions are stopped from being fed back in to DMS | 08:00 - 18:00 Mon - Fri | Dev Client Solutions, Adam Hargreaves |
| Data Loader | CAMteamleaders@stepchange.org CorrespondenceTeam@stepchange.org |
All DMS users, CAM, Corres, settlements | 1000s of updates to client accounts, including transfers balance updates cannot be processed | Dev Finance, Lee Insley, Paul Marshall | |
| DCS Comms | All Operational Departments | Used to send out communications to clients and creditors, props and reprops via PRIME for letters or direct for e-mails. | 08:00 - 20:00 Mon - Fri, Debt Advice 08:00 - 16:00 Sat, Client Support 09:00 - 14:00 Sat | Dev Client Solutions, Adam Hargreaves | |
| DLR/TCS | TCSUsers@stepchange.org; stepchangemanagers@stepchange.org; ITLeadershipTeam@stepchange.org; TeamLeaders@stepchange.org; SDTeam@stepchange.org |
Debt Advice, Scotland Services | No decision logic. | 08:00 - 20:00 Mon - Fri, Debt Advice 08:00 - 16:00 Sat | Dev Client Solutions, Adam Hargreaves |
| DMS4 | DMSUsers@stepchange.org; stepchangemanagers@stepchange.org; ITLeadershipTeam@stepchange.org; TeamLeaders@stepchange.org; SDTeam@stepchange.org> | All DMS Users, Debt Advice, DRO Team | Cannot intergrate with Pulse, Creditor Web, unable to disburse | 08:00 to 18:00 Mon - Fri | CAM, Glen Tillotson, Lee Insley |
| DMS6 | CVPP | Cloud Hosted DMS, used to manage CVPP plans | CVPP, Glen Tillotson | ||
| Docutrieve | PlanActivationsTeamLeaders@stepchange.org CAMteamleaders@stepchange.org |
Plan Activations, CAM, Settlements | Correspondence Scan Utility | 08:00 - 18:00 Mon - Fri | Dev Client Solutions, Adam Hargreaves |
| Erik | IT | 08:00 - 18:00 Mon - Fri | Dev Client Solutions, Adam Hargreaves | ||
| Financial Portal | CAMteamleaders@stepchange.org | CAM, CMR | Reconcilation between bank accounts and DMS balances | 09:00 - 17:00 Mon - Fri | Glen Tillotson, Lee Insley |
| iFace | PlanActivationsTeamLeaders@stepchange.org | Plan Activations | Reminders not being sent out | 08:00 - 18:00 Mon - Fri | Plan Activations, Arron High |
| iPortal | regulatoryfinancemanagers@stepchange.org | Regulatory Finance | CAM, Glen Tillotson | ||
| Intelliflo | regulatoryfinancemanagers@stepchange.org; FinancialSolutionsTeamLeaders@stepchange.org |
Financial Solutions, Mortgage Debt device, Regulatory Finance | Regulatory risk, reports need to go out within 5 working days | 09:00 to 17:00 Mon - Fri | Financial Solutions, Furhan Warner-Malik |
| KMS | ??? | ||||
| Lloyds | regulatoryfinancemanagers@stepchange.org | Regulatory Finance, Finance | Unable to see bank balances, but don't pay anything from it, so not critical | 09:00 - 17:00 Mon - Fri | CAM, Glen Tillotson |
| Mitel | All Ops and Support departments | Unable to receive or make calls to clients | 08:00 - 20:00 Mon - Fri, Debt Advice 08:00 - 16:00 Sat, Client Support 09:00 - 14:00 Sat | Prodec, Robert Ward | |
| Online Review | Clients would be unable to complete reviews via our Website | Dev Client Solutions, Adam Hargreaves | |||
| PAALICE | planactivations@stepchange.org | Plan Activations | Advisors rely on the templates this provides, but can still work without it. | 08:00 - 18:00 Mon - Fri | Plan activations, Peter Sears |
| Portal | Dev Client Solutions, Adam Hargreaves | ||||
| Priority Arrears Calculator | ??? | ||||
| Report Manager | DBA, Client Solutions, Adam Hargreaves, Lee Insley | ||||
| Sage | FinanceAndReportingTeam@stepchange.org | Finance | Unable to run or connect to the Sage database | 09:00 - 17:00 Mon - Fri | Finance, Ian Warner |
| Santander | regulatoryfinancemanagers@stepchange.org | Regulatory Finance | Unable to access client money info to complete reconciliations | 09:00 - 17:00 Mon - Fri | CAM, Glen Tillotson |
| SFS Calculator | |||||
| TEDD | DRO team (Birmingham) | Reminders not being sent out to clients | 09:00 - 17:00 Mon - Fri | Dev Client Solutions, Adam Hargreaves | |
| TFS |