Recovery exercises

A recovery exercise rehearses a degradation and its restoration. Start one from a record's Degradation menu or under Continuity, Recovery exercises. It uses the map, the notice window and a recovery checklist derived from the owner-assigned sequence, and records the time each system is restored. When several people mark steps restored, every step they mark is kept, each with the time it was first marked. An edit to a step someone else has removed is refused: “That step was removed by someone else.” Notices prepared during an exercise are marked as exercises. On the Continuity tiles for recovery and tabletop exercises, the next exercise shows Overdue from the day after it is due, by the interval set under Settings, Continuity; on the due day itself the tile shows the date.

Ending an exercise records what went well, what should improve and follow-up actions, which are created as Jira work items when a mitigation space is configured. An exercise is ended once: if someone else ends it first, or you end it in another window, nothing of your end is recorded. The dialog is held, with End exercise showing Ending…, while your review notes are added to the recorded review as a separate edit, within the 20,000-character limit, and then closes with a message such as “Someone else ended this exercise first, so it was not ended again. Your review notes were added to the review recorded on it.” When it was you in another window, the message begins “You already ended this exercise in another window.”, also when that window finds the exercise already ended before it sends anything.

You are told your notes were added only once EA Sphere has recorded them. If they cannot be added, the dialog stays open with what you typed and EA Sphere says why, for example “Someone else ended this exercise first, so it was not ended again. Your review notes were not added: EA Sphere could not be reached. What you typed is still in the dialog; select End exercise to add them.”; the other reason given is that EA Sphere does not show the exercise as ended yet. When the answer to that save was lost, the part after the first sentence reads “It is not known yet whether your review notes were added: EA Sphere could not be reached. What you typed is still in the dialog; select End exercise to check and add them.” Selecting End exercise again adds them once. If the dialog is no longer open, the message ends “Open the exercise to add them.” No follow-up actions are created a second time, and when several people end it at once, everyone's notes are kept in this way.

When the answer to an end is lost and EA Sphere cannot be reached, EA Sphere says “It is not known yet whether the exercise was ended: EA Sphere could not be reached. What you typed is still in the dialog; select End exercise to check and try again.” This is said only when the answer was lost on the way; a license that is no longer active, or a deletion or replacement of all data, is reported as such, as for any other save. An end sent again after a lost connection is recognized as your own, because EA Sphere records who ended the exercise: it confirms that the exercise is recorded, replaces the text and results it sent before with what the dialog now holds, so no text appears twice, keeps anything others added, and creates the follow-up actions once. If someone marks the exercised system's step restored a moment before you end the exercise, the end is refused and the review dialog stays open, its status line showing the exercise read again, so you can review it and end it again.

Review notes and observations are never cut short: a review or observations longer than 20,000 characters are refused, and EA Sphere asks you to shorten your notes. Notes from someone who ends the exercise a moment after someone else are added, as a separate edit, only while the review stays within 20,000 characters; otherwise EA Sphere tells that person their notes were not added. Once an exercise has ended, its steps can no longer be changed; its observations and review can. End exercise saves the observations only if they changed, including observations whose own save failed while the exercise ran; it adds them to any observations someone else saved meanwhile, and if someone else ended the exercise first, they are added to it and EA Sphere says so.

Observations whose save is not recorded stay in the dialog while it is open, and the page shows the stored observations again. They are kept only when you close the exercise dialog or the End the exercise dialog yourself, with Close, Cancel, Escape, Back or a click outside the dialog, whether their save is still on its way or has failed: EA Sphere then says, for example, “Your observations were not saved. They are kept, and offered again when you open the exercise.” When the answer was lost, EA Sphere checks the stored observations first; if they cannot be read, closing says “It is not known yet whether your observations were saved: EA Sphere could not be reached. They are kept, and offered again when you open the exercise.” When EA Sphere closes the dialog itself, because the exercise was ended or deleted or all data was replaced, nothing is kept: the observations went with the end, or the exercise no longer exists. Kept observations are offered once, with a note, when the exercise is next opened; after that the box decides, so emptying it keeps nothing, and observations that were saved are not offered again.

Closing the exercise dialog after its observations failed to save, with Escape, Back or a click outside it, asks no question when the observations are all that changed: they are kept, as with Close. Closing the End the exercise dialog while the observations are still being saved says “Your observations are still being saved. You will be told if they are not.”, followed by “Your observations were saved.” or, if they were not, “Your observations were not saved. They are kept, and offered again when you open the exercise.” While observations are kept, the page asks before it is closed. If the exercise was deleted, by anyone, perhaps by you in another window, EA Sphere says “Your observations were not saved: the exercise was deleted.”, and observations kept for an exercise deleted later are dropped at the next refresh, with the same message. If you open the exercise dialog again while your observations are still on their way and their save then fails, EA Sphere says “Your observations were not saved. They are still in the dialog; select Save to try again.”, and nothing is kept to be offered again.

If the exercise is ended before kept observations are saved, they are added to it, and EA Sphere says “The exercise on Payroll was ended by someone else. The observations you typed earlier were added to it.” If you ended it yourself in another window, the message begins “You ended the exercise on Payroll in another window.” When the exercise is ended while its dialog is open, EA Sphere says “Someone else ended this exercise.”, or “You ended this exercise in another window.”, and, once the observations you typed are recorded, “Your observations were saved with the exercise someone else ended.” or “Your observations were saved with the exercise you ended in another window.” When two people change the same text of a review, starting from the same copy, the later save is refused, and EA Sphere says that someone else changed the review and that the changes are still in the dialog to review and save again; when each of them only added text at the end, both additions are kept. Exercises are excluded from degradation statistics.