Group components into nested components
Group related components on your Spike status page under a parent component, so a single row tells you whether anything inside it is unhealthy.
Grouping components gives you fewer rows to scan, and a group's status tells you at a glance whether anything inside it is unhealthy. Put "India" and "Japan" under "Asia", or "SMS", "Slack" and "Phone" under "Alerting". These are called nested components.
Nesting is exactly one level deep. A component that is nested cannot contain anything itself, so the dashboard only ever offers top-level components as parents.
Nest a component
Open the component's edit dialog and pick a Parent component from the dropdown. The dropdown lists only top-level components.
To keep a component at the top level, leave the dropdown on No parent (top level).
If the component you are editing already has components nested under it, the dropdown is replaced by a line telling you to move or remove those first.
Reorder and move components on the list
On the components list, nested components appear as indented rows under their parent. Expand and collapse a parent to show or hide them.
Each row's menu offers:
Make top-level: moves a nested component out of its group.
Move under…: moves a component into a group.
Move up / Move down: changes the component's position.
You can also drag rows to reorder them. Reordering happens within a group: top-level components reorder among themselves, and nested components reorder inside their parent.
How a parent's status is derived
A parent's status is derived, never set by hand. It shows the worst status among itself and everything nested under it, from least to most severe:
Operational
Planned maintenance
Degraded performance
Partial outage
Critical outage
So a parent whose child is in a partial outage shows a partial outage, even if the parent itself is fine.
The parent's 90-day uptime graph folds in its nested components' bars the same way — each day shows the worst state across the group.
Select a group when you declare an incident
When you declare an incident, the affected-components picker is a tree with a search box. The search filters both levels, and a matching nested component keeps its parent visible.
Ticking a parent is a shortcut that selects everything nested under it, and unticking it clears them. When only some of a parent's children are selected, the parent shows a partial tick. You still set a status for each selected component.
What visitors see
On the public status page, nested components are grouped under their parent behind a Show nested components / Hide nested components toggle that shows how many there are. Visitors can toggle any group themselves.
A group starts expanded when the parent's status is anything other than operational, so nothing is hidden on a bad day, and starts collapsed when everything in it is healthy.
Subscriber notification emails group the affected components under their parent and note how many nested components were affected.
Archive a parent component
A component that still has components nested under it cannot be archived. Spike refuses and tells you to move or archive the nested components first.
FAQs
Can I nest a component more than one level deep?
No. Nesting is exactly one level. A component that is already nested cannot become a parent, which is why the Parent component dropdown only ever lists top-level components.
Can I set a parent's status directly?
No. A parent's status is always derived from the worst status among itself and its nested components. To change what a parent shows, change the status of whatever inside it is unhealthy.
Does a parent's uptime graph include its nested components?
Yes. Each day in the parent's 90-day graph shows the worst state across the group. If you move an existing component under a parent, the parent's graph recalculates across all 90 days, so the component's past outages show up in the group straight away.
Does re-parenting a component affect an open incident?
No. The incident keeps the same affected components. Moving one into or out of a group changes how it is displayed, not what the incident refers to.
Why does a parent show a partly filled tick when I declare an incident?
Some of its nested components are selected and some are not. Tick the parent itself to select all of them, and untick it to clear them.
Do visitors' expand and collapse choices carry over between visits?
No. Those choices are not saved. Each visit starts from the default: expanded when the parent's status is anything other than operational, collapsed when everything in the group is healthy.
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