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Elastic Docs ›Kibana Guide [8.15] ›Stack Management ›Cases

Open and manage cases

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Open and manage cases

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To perform these tasks, you must have full access to the appropriate case features in Kibana.

Open a new case

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Open a new case to keep track of issues and share their details with colleagues.

  1. Go to Management > Stack Management > Cases, then click Create case.

    Create a case in Stack Management
  2. If you defined templates, you can optionally select one to use its default field values. [preview] This functionality is in technical preview and may be changed or removed in a future release. Elastic will work to fix any issues, but features in technical preview are not subject to the support SLA of official GA features.

  3. Give the case a name, severity, and description.

    In the Description area, you can use Markdown syntax to create formatted text.

  4. Optionally, add a category, assignees, and tags. You can add users only if they meet the necessary prerequisites.
  5. If you defined any custom fields, they appear in the Additional fields section. [8.15.0] Added in 8.15.0.
  6. For the External incident management system, select a connector. For more information, refer to External incident management systems.
  7. After you’ve completed all of the required fields, click Create case.

[preview] This functionality is in technical preview and may be changed or removed in a future release. Elastic will work to fix any issues, but features in technical preview are not subject to the support SLA of official GA features. Alternatively, you can configure your rules to automatically create cases by using case actions. By default, the rule adds all of the alerts within a specified time window to a single case. You can optionally choose a field to group the alerts and create separate cases for each group. You can also choose whether you want the rule to reopen cases or open new ones when the time window elapses.

Add email notifications

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You can configure email notifications that occur when users are assigned to cases.

For hosted Kibana on Elasticsearch Service:

  1. Add the email domains to the notifications domain allowlist.

    You do not need to take any more steps to configure an email connector or update Kibana user settings, since the preconfigured Elastic-Cloud-SMTP connector is used by default.

For self-managed Kibana:

  1. Create a preconfigured email connector.

    At this time, email notifications support only preconfigured connectors, which are defined in the kibana.yml file. For examples, refer to Email connectors and Configure email accounts for well-known services.

  2. Set the notifications.connectors.default.email Kibana setting to the name of your email connector.
  3. If you want the email notifications to contain links back to the case, you must configure the server.publicBaseUrl setting.

When you subsequently add assignees to cases, they receive an email.

Add files

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After you create a case, you can upload and manage files on the Files tab:

A list of files attached to a case

The acceptable file types and sizes are affected by your case settings.

To download or delete the file or copy the file hash to your clipboard, open the action menu (…). The available hash functions are MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-256.

When you upload a file, a comment is added to the case activity log. To view images, click their name in the activity or file list.

Uploaded files are also accessible in Stack Management > Files. When you export cases as saved objects, the case files are not exported.

Add visualizations

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You can also optionally add visualizations. For example, you can portray event and alert data through charts and graphs.

Adding a visualization as a comment within a case

To add a visualization to a comment within your case:

  1. Click the Visualization button. The Add visualization dialog appears.

  2. Select an existing visualization from your Visualize Library or create a new visualization.

    Set an absolute time range for your visualization. This ensures your visualization doesn’t change over time after you save it to your case and provides important context for viewers.

  3. After you’ve finished creating your visualization, click Save and return to go back to your case.
  4. Click Preview to see how the visualization will appear in the case comment.
  5. Click Add Comment to add the visualization to your case.

Alternatively, while viewing a dashboard you can open a panel’s menu then click More > Add to existing case or More > Add to new case.

After a visualization has been added to a case, you can modify or interact with it by clicking the Open Visualization option in the case’s comment menu.

Manage cases

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In Management > Stack Management > Cases, you can search cases and filter them by attributes such as assignees, categories, severity, status, and tags. You can also select multiple cases and use bulk actions to delete cases or change their attributes.

To view a case, click on its name. You can then:

  • Add a new comment.
  • Edit existing comments and the description.
  • Add or remove assignees.
  • Add a connector.
  • Send updates to external systems (if external connections are configured).
  • Edit the category and tags.
  • Refresh the case to retrieve the latest updates.
  • Change the status.
  • Change the severity.
  • Close or delete the case.
  • Reopen a closed case.
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