Incident Manager Backend: API Design & Requirements

This document outlines the backend design and requirements for the Incident Manager application, focusing on providing secure, reliable APIs, background processing, and auditing for the incident lifecycle. This discussion category covers the core functionalities without chat integrations.

Goal

The primary goal is to develop a robust backend system that provides secure and reliable APIs, background processing capabilities, and comprehensive auditing functionalities to support the entire incident lifecycle. It's crucial to emphasize that this backend will not include any chat integrations, focusing solely on the core incident management processes.

Delivering Secure and Reliable APIs

The APIs are the backbone of our Incident Manager, guys. Secure and reliable APIs are pivotal for seamless frontend integration and external system interactions. We'll need to pay close attention to authentication, authorization, rate limiting, and structured error handling. Think of it this way: the API is the front door to our application's core functionality, and we need to make sure it's both welcoming and secure. A well-designed API simplifies the frontend development process, reduces integration complexities, and ensures that data flows smoothly between the backend and the user interface. This reliability translates to a better user experience, fewer support tickets, and a more resilient system overall.

Background Processing for Efficiency

Efficiency is key, and background processing is our friend here. We'll use it for tasks like sending notifications, generating reports, and handling webhook deliveries. Background processing ensures that our core API services remain responsive and performant, preventing delays and bottlenecks. Imagine if every time an incident was updated, the system ground to a halt while sending out a hundred email notifications. Nobody wants that! Background processing allows us to offload these tasks to separate workers, keeping the main application thread free and clear. This approach enhances the overall system responsiveness, improves the user experience, and allows us to scale individual components as needed.

Auditing for Compliance and Insights

Last but not least, auditing. Auditing is crucial for security, compliance, and gaining valuable insights into how the system is being used. We need to track every change, every access, every action. It's like having a detailed logbook of everything that happens within the system. Comprehensive auditing provides a clear trail of actions, making it easier to identify security breaches, track down errors, and understand user behavior. This is not just about meeting regulatory requirements; it's about building trust and transparency in the system. Detailed audit logs can be invaluable for debugging, performance analysis, and even identifying opportunities for process improvement.

Outcomes

Consistent, Well-Documented API

We're aiming for a consistent and well-documented API that makes life easier for the frontend developers. This API should be intuitive to use and predictable in its behavior. A consistent API means sticking to a set of standards and conventions for endpoints, request/response formats, and error handling. This consistency reduces the learning curve for developers, minimizes integration errors, and makes the API easier to maintain over time. But consistency alone isn't enough. We also need well-documented API. Think clear, concise, and comprehensive documentation with plenty of examples. Tools like Swagger or OpenAPI can help us generate interactive documentation that allows developers to explore the API and test endpoints directly. A well-documented API empowers developers to integrate with our backend quickly and confidently, freeing them up to focus on building amazing user experiences.

Strong Auditing and Permission Boundaries

Security is paramount, so we need strong auditing and clear permission boundaries. This means ensuring that only authorized users can access specific resources and functionalities. Strong auditing provides a detailed record of all actions performed within the system, including who did what, when, and how. This is crucial for security investigations, compliance reporting, and identifying potential misuse. But auditing is only one piece of the puzzle. We also need clear permission boundaries to enforce the principle of least privilege. This means granting users only the access they absolutely need to perform their job duties. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is a common approach to managing permissions, where users are assigned roles with specific privileges. By combining strong auditing with clear permission boundaries, we can create a secure and trustworthy system that protects sensitive data and prevents unauthorized access.

Reliable Webhook Delivery

Reliable webhook delivery is essential for integrating with downstream systems. If a webhook fails, we need to retry it, and if it keeps failing, we need to know about it. We'll need robust retry mechanisms, dead-letter queues, and proper logging to ensure webhooks are delivered successfully. Reliable webhook delivery ensures that external systems are notified of important events in a timely and consistent manner. Webhooks enable real-time integration between our Incident Manager and other applications, such as notification systems, monitoring tools, and reporting dashboards. A robust webhook delivery system should include features like retries with exponential backoff, dead-letter queues for failed deliveries, and comprehensive logging for troubleshooting. By ensuring webhooks are delivered reliably, we can build a more responsive and integrated ecosystem around our Incident Manager.

API Surface and Behaviors

Auth

Authentication is the first line of defense. We need to make sure we've got secure login, token refresh, logout endpoints, API keys, and rate limits in place. Let's break this down, guys:

• Login returns access and refresh tokens: Access tokens should be short-lived and used for authenticating requests, while refresh tokens are used to obtain new access tokens without requiring the user to log in again. This approach enhances security by minimizing the window of opportunity for token theft or misuse.
• Token refresh and logout endpoints: These are essential for managing user sessions and ensuring security. The token refresh endpoint allows users to obtain new access tokens without re-entering their credentials, while the logout endpoint invalidates both access and refresh tokens, effectively ending the user's session.
• API keys: create, list, revoke: API keys provide a way for external applications to access our API. We need to provide mechanisms for creating, listing, and revoking API keys to manage access and ensure security.
• Rate limits per token and per IP with safe defaults: Rate limiting is crucial for preventing abuse and ensuring the stability of our API. We should implement rate limits per token and per IP address, with sensible default values that can be adjusted as needed.
• Error responses use a structured problem format with correlation IDs: Structured error responses make it easier for clients to understand what went wrong and how to fix it. Correlation IDs help us track requests across different services and components, making debugging easier.

Users and Roles

We'll use Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) with roles like Admin, Manager, Responder, and Viewer. Each role will have a specific set of permissions. Let's dive into these roles and their permissions:

• Roles: Admin, Manager, Responder, Viewer: These roles represent different levels of access and responsibility within the Incident Manager application.
• Inclusive permissions model: This means that permissions are granted explicitly to roles, rather than being denied. This approach makes it easier to reason about permissions and reduces the risk of accidentally denying access to authorized users.
  • Viewer: read-only: Viewers can only read data; they cannot make any changes.
  • Responder: create incidents, add events, manage own tasks, change status except Close: Responders have the ability to create incidents, add events, manage their own tasks, and change the status of incidents (except for closing them).
  • Manager: assign roles on incidents, change severity, close incidents, manage services: Managers have more elevated privileges, including the ability to assign roles on incidents, change the severity of incidents, close incidents, and manage services.
  • Admin: manage users, webhooks, API keys, and configuration: Administrators have the highest level of access and can manage users, webhooks, API keys, and the overall configuration of the system.

Services

We need to be able to list, create, edit, and delete services. Each service should have owner metadata for routing and reports. Services in this context likely refer to the systems or applications that incidents are related to. For example, a service might be a specific web application, a database server, or a network component. Being able to list, create, edit, and delete services allows us to maintain an up-to-date inventory of the systems we're managing. The owner metadata for each service is crucial for routing incidents to the appropriate teams or individuals and for generating reports on service-specific incidents. This ensures that incidents are addressed by the right people and that we can track the performance of individual services over time.

Incidents

Incidents are the heart of the system. We need to be able to create them with various details, read them individually or in lists with filters, and update them. This functionality is at the core of the Incident Manager. Incidents represent disruptions or issues that need to be addressed. The ability to create incidents with details like title, description, severity, associated services, and tags is fundamental. Reading incidents individually allows users to access the specific details of a particular incident. Listing incidents with filters (e.g., by status, severity, service, assignee, tags, date ranges, or free-text query) enables users to quickly find the incidents they're interested in. The ability to update partial fields (e.g., status, severity, lead, services, tags) allows users to make changes to incidents as they evolve. Finally, a dedicated close operation that sets the status to Closed and records a timestamp ensures that incidents are properly resolved and tracked.

Timeline and Events

Every incident has a timeline of events. We need to be able to list these events with pagination and create new events with different types. The timeline provides a chronological record of everything that happened during an incident's lifecycle. The ability to list events by incident with pagination ensures that users can navigate through the timeline efficiently, even for incidents with a large number of events. Creating events with different types (e.g., StatusChange, Note, Assignment, Attachment, System) allows us to capture the various aspects of an incident's progression. Storing details like author, body, metadata, and timestamps provides a rich context for each event. System events recorded for automated actions (e.g., reminders) provide transparency into the system's behavior. This comprehensive event tracking is crucial for understanding the full story of an incident and for learning from past experiences.

Tasks

Incidents often involve tasks. We need to be able to list and CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) tasks per incident, with details like title, description, owner, due date, and completion time. Tasks are the actionable steps taken to resolve an incident. The ability to list and CRUD tasks per incident allows us to break down complex incidents into manageable pieces and track progress on each task. Each task should have a clear title and description, an assigned owner, a due date, and a completion time. Overdue detection is essential for identifying tasks that are falling behind schedule and for triggering appropriate alerts or escalations. By managing tasks effectively, we can ensure that incidents are resolved efficiently and effectively.

Postmortems

Postmortems are crucial for learning from incidents. We need to be able to upsert (update or insert) markdown content, retrieve it, and track the published state. We also need an export endpoint to return a compiled summary and timeline. Postmortems, also known as incident reviews or retrospective analyses, are essential for learning from incidents and preventing them from happening again. The ability to upsert markdown content allows users to create and edit postmortem documents in a flexible and user-friendly format. Retrieving the content allows users to review and share the postmortem analysis. Tracking the published state ensures that postmortems are properly reviewed and approved before being disseminated. An export endpoint that returns a compiled summary and timeline makes it easy to share the key findings and actions from the postmortem with stakeholders. This process of creating, reviewing, and sharing postmortems is critical for continuous improvement in incident management.

Attachments

Attachments provide additional context to incidents and events. We need a pre-signed upload workflow, size limits, allowed content types, and an option for antivirus checks. Attachments can include screenshots, log files, configuration files, or any other documents that provide valuable context for an incident. A pre-signed upload workflow enhances security by allowing clients to upload files directly to storage without going through the backend server. Enforcing size limits and allowed content types helps prevent malicious uploads and ensures that the storage system is used efficiently. An optional antivirus check provides an additional layer of security by scanning uploaded files for malware before they are exposed to users. These measures ensure that attachments are handled securely and efficiently.

Webhooks (Outbound)

Webhooks allow us to notify other systems about incident updates. We need CRUD functionality, events for various incident lifecycle stages, a delivery worker with retries, exponential backoff, dead-letter storage, HMAC signature headers, delivery logs, and a test delivery endpoint. Guys, Webhooks are a powerful mechanism for integrating our Incident Manager with other systems. They allow us to send real-time notifications to external applications whenever certain events occur, such as the creation, update, or closure of an incident. Providing CRUD functionality for webhooks allows users to configure the webhooks they need. Supporting events for various incident lifecycle stages (e.g., incident.created, incident.updated, incident.closed, task.created, task.completed, postmortem.published) ensures that external systems are notified of all relevant changes. A reliable delivery worker with retries, exponential backoff, and dead-letter storage is crucial for ensuring that webhooks are delivered successfully, even in the face of temporary network issues or system outages. HMAC signature headers provide security by allowing recipients to verify the authenticity of the webhook payload. Delivery logs provide transparency into the webhook delivery process. A test delivery endpoint allows users to verify that their webhooks are configured correctly.

Configuration

We need to be able to read and update severities and statuses, with validation to prevent removing in-use values without migration. Configuration management is crucial for ensuring that the Incident Manager is tailored to the specific needs of the organization. The ability to read and update severities and statuses allows users to customize the incident classification scheme. Validation to prevent the removal of in-use values without migration ensures that existing incidents are not left in an inconsistent state. This configuration functionality provides the flexibility to adapt the system to evolving requirements while maintaining data integrity.

Observability and Health

We need liveness and readiness endpoints, metrics, and structured logs for monitoring and troubleshooting. Observability is key to a healthy system. Liveness and readiness endpoints are critical for automated monitoring and health checks. The liveness endpoint indicates whether the application is running, while the readiness endpoint indicates whether the application is ready to serve traffic. A metrics endpoint provides standard counters, latencies, and queue depths, allowing us to monitor the performance of the system over time. Structured logs with request IDs and actor identity make it easier to trace requests through the system and identify the user or system that initiated the request. These observability features are essential for proactive monitoring, rapid troubleshooting, and ensuring the overall health of the Incident Manager.

Data Model Requirements

The data model should include Users, Services, Incidents, IncidentEvents, IncidentTasks, Postmortems, Attachments, ApiKeys, Webhooks, and AuditLog. We'll need indexes for common filters and soft delete where needed, always audited. The data model is the foundation of our application. We need to carefully consider the entities we need to store and the relationships between them. The required entities include Users, Services, Incidents, IncidentEvents, IncidentTasks, Postmortems, Attachments, ApiKeys, Webhooks, and AuditLog. Indexes are crucial for optimizing query performance. We need to define indexes for common filters, including composite indexes on status, severity, and created time, as well as a GIN index on tags. Soft delete, where data is marked as deleted but not physically removed from the database, can be useful for maintaining historical data and for compliance purposes. However, soft delete should only be used where needed, as it can add complexity to queries. Auditing every change to the data is essential for security and compliance.

Security and Compliance

Security is paramount. We need to enforce least privilege, validate input, encode output, handle errors safely, never log secrets, redact PII, and audit every mutating request. Pagination should be cursor-based. Security must be a top priority throughout the development process. Enforcing the principle of least privilege, where users are granted only the access they need to perform their job duties, is crucial for minimizing the risk of unauthorized access. Input validation at the boundary prevents malicious data from entering the system. Output encoding ensures that data is rendered safely in the user interface, preventing cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities. Safe error messages prevent the disclosure of sensitive information. Secrets, such as passwords and API keys, should never be logged. Personally identifiable information (PII) should be redacted in logs and exports to protect user privacy. Auditing every mutating request, including the actor, target, and payload hash, provides a detailed record of all changes made to the system. Cursor-based pagination prevents data drift, ensuring that users see a consistent view of the data, even if it is modified while they are paging through it.

Reliability and Performance

Reliability and performance are key. We need idempotency keys, backpressure on background workers, timeouts and circuit breakers for external calls, and SLOs (Service Level Objectives) defined for latencies and success rates. Reliability ensures that the system is available and functioning correctly when users need it. Performance ensures that the system responds quickly and efficiently. Idempotency keys for create endpoints prevent duplicate requests from being processed. Backpressure on background workers prevents them from being overwhelmed by a sudden influx of tasks. Timeouts and circuit breakers for external calls prevent cascading failures. SLOs defined for p50 and p95 latencies and success rates provide clear targets for performance and reliability. These measures are essential for building a system that is both reliable and performant.

Testing and Quality

Testing is essential for quality. We need unit tests, contract tests, integration tests, end-to-end tests, seed data, and coverage targets. Quality is not an afterthought; it's an integral part of the development process. Unit tests verify that individual components of the system function correctly. Contract tests assert that request and response shapes conform to the API specification. Integration tests verify that different parts of the system work together correctly, including database access, storage, and webhook delivery. End-to-end tests cover the full incident lifecycle, ensuring that all features work as expected. Seed data for local and CI environments with deterministic fixtures ensures that tests are repeatable and reliable. Coverage targets for core domains and mutation endpoints provide a metric for assessing the thoroughness of testing. These testing practices are essential for building a high-quality system.

Documentation

Documentation is crucial for usability and maintainability. We need a human-readable API reference with examples, a change log, and a runbook for on-call personnel. Documentation is often overlooked, but it's essential for making the system usable and maintainable. A human-readable API reference with examples helps developers understand how to use the API. A change log with breaking changes clearly flagged makes it easier to upgrade to new versions of the API. A runbook for on-call personnel provides guidance for handling common failure modes and remediation steps. These documentation efforts ensure that the system is easy to use, easy to maintain, and easy to troubleshoot.

Operational Requirements

We need configuration via environment, migrations for schema changes, a rollback strategy, backup and restore procedures, and a data retention policy. Operational requirements ensure that the system can be deployed, managed, and maintained effectively in a production environment. Configuration via environment allows us to configure the system without modifying the code. Migrations are required for all schema changes to ensure that the database schema is kept up-to-date. A rollback strategy provides a plan for reverting to a previous version of the system if a deployment fails. Backup and restore procedures ensure that we can recover from data loss. A data retention and export policy defines how long data is stored and how it can be exported. These operational considerations are crucial for ensuring the long-term success of the system.

Folder and Naming Conventions

Consistent folder and naming conventions are important for maintainability. Here’s a proposed structure:

backend/
src/modules/incident/ entities, mappers, services, routes, tests
src/modules/service/
src/modules/user/
src/modules/webhook/
src/common/ auth, errors, schemas, utils, middleware
migrations/
jobs/ background workers
tests/ unit, integration, e2e
scripts/ maintenance and seed

Consistent folder and naming conventions are essential for code organization and maintainability. This structure provides a clear separation of concerns, making it easier to navigate the codebase and understand the purpose of each file and directory. Tests should be co-located per module with mirrors in tests/ for cross-module suites. Consistent naming for DTOs (Data Transfer Objects), handlers, and services further enhances code readability and maintainability.

Acceptance Criteria

Finally, we need clear acceptance criteria. The full incident lifecycle should work via the API, RBAC should block unauthorized actions, webhooks should be delivered reliably, health endpoints should be verified, and there should be no critical or high-severity defects at release. These acceptance criteria provide a clear definition of when the system is considered complete and ready for release. The full incident lifecycle should work by API, meaning that all core functionalities, such as creating incidents, adding events and tasks, assigning users, changing status, closing incidents, authoring and retrieving postmortems, and managing webhooks and keys, should be accessible through the API. RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) should block unauthorized actions, ensuring that users can only perform actions that they are authorized to perform. Webhook deliveries should include signatures, retries, and logged outcomes, ensuring that webhooks are delivered reliably and securely. Health, readiness, and metrics endpoints should be verified in CI (Continuous Integration), providing confidence in the system's health and performance. Finally, there should be no critical or high-severity defects open at release, ensuring that the system is stable and reliable for users.

This document serves as a starting point for discussion and refinement. Let's collaborate to build an awesome incident management backend!