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What Are Incidents?

Incidents represent unplanned service disruptions or outages. They help you transparently communicate with users about issues affecting your services.

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Creating an Incident

To create a new incident:
  1. Navigate to your Status Page in the sidebar
  2. Select Incidents
  3. Click + New Incident or similar button
  4. Fill in the incident details

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Incident Information

Incident Title:
  • Clear, concise description of the issue
  • Example: “API Response Delays”
  • Example: “Website Unavailable”
Affected Components:
  • Select which monitors/services are impacted
  • You can select multiple components
  • Helps users quickly see what’s affected
Severity Level:
  • Minor - Small issue, limited impact
  • Major - Significant issue affecting many users
  • Critical - Complete outage, all users affected
Status:
  • Investigating - You’re looking into the issue
  • Identified - Root cause found
  • Monitoring - Fix applied, watching for stability
  • Resolved - Issue completely fixed

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Incident Lifecycle

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1. Investigating

When you first detect an issue:
  • Create incident with “Investigating” status
  • Select affected components
  • Provide initial description
Example: 
Title: API Response Delays
Status: Investigating
Components: API Services
Message: We're currently experiencing slower than normal API response times.
Our team is investigating the root cause.

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2. Identified

Once you know the cause:
  • Update incident status to “Identified”
  • Add an update explaining what you found
  • Provide estimated resolution time if possible

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3. Monitoring

After applying a fix:
  • Change status to “Monitoring”
  • Explain what was fixed
  • Note that you’re watching for stability

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4. Resolved

When completely fixed:
  • Update status to “Resolved”
  • Summarize the fix
  • Thank users for patience
  • Optionally include post-mortem details

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Incident Updates

Throughout an incident’s lifecycle, provide regular updates:
  • First 30 minutes - Every 10-15 minutes
  • After 30 minutes - Every 30-60 minutes
  • Even without news - Update to show you’re working on it
Users prefer frequent updates, even if there’s no new information. It shows you’re actively working on the issue.

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Best Practices

Post incidents before users report them. This reduces support load and builds trust.
Explain what happened in simple terms. Users appreciate honesty about issues.
Regular updates show you’re actively working on the problem, even if there’s no resolution yet.
Avoid technical jargon. Use language your users understand.
Automatic timestamps help users understand the timeline of events.
Only mark incidents as resolved when you’re confident the issue won’t recur.

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Incident Severity Guidelines

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Minor

  • Affects < 10% of users
  • Workarounds available
  • Non-critical features impacted
  • Example: “Image uploads slower than usual”

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Major

  • Affects 10-50% of users
  • Significant feature degradation
  • No easy workaround
  • Example: “Login delays affecting some users”

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Critical

  • Affects > 50% of users or all users
  • Complete service outage
  • Core functionality unavailable
  • Example: “Website completely down”

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Communication Tips

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Initial Incident Post

Title: Database Connection Issues
Status: Investigating
Severity: Major
Affected: Website, API

We're currently experiencing database connection issues affecting
our website and API. Users may see errors when loading pages.
Our engineering team is investigating the root cause.

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Mid-Incident Update

Status: Identified
Update: We've identified the cause as a database configuration issue
during our recent deployment. We're rolling back the deployment and
expect service to resume within 15 minutes.

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Resolution Post

Status: Resolved
Update: The deployment has been rolled back and all services are now
operating normally. Database connections have been restored. We apologize
for the inconvenience and are reviewing our deployment process to prevent
similar issues in the future.

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Where Incidents Appear

  • Status Page - Public-facing incident timeline
  • Email - Sent to subscribers (if configured)
  • Slack/Teams - Posted to configured channels
  • RSS Feed - Available for automation
  • Status Badge - Reflects incident state

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Post-Incident Review

After resolving an incident, consider:
  1. Root Cause Analysis - What actually happened?
  2. Impact Assessment - How many users were affected?
  3. Timeline Review - How long did it take to resolve?
  4. Process Improvements - How can we prevent this?
  5. Communication Review - Did we update users effectively?

Create Incident Updates

Learn how to add updates to incidents

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Next Steps

Incident Updates

Add timeline updates to incidents

Scheduled Maintenance

Plan and communicate maintenance windows

Status Pages

Configure your status page

Notifications

Set up incident notifications