Post-Mortem
Structured after-action reports for incidents and maintenance.
After an incident or maintenance event is resolved, you can attach a structured post-mortem report with root cause analysis and remediation action items. Publish the report when you are ready for a callout and dedicated page on your status dashboards.
Report sections
A post-mortem is a structured report you attach to an incident or maintenance event after it is resolved. It is not available on informational events.
The Post-Mortem tab manages its own save cycle — changes are saved separately from the main event form.
A post-mortem has four parts:
- Executive Summary — the opening overview of your report: scope, impact, and outcome. Gives readers the key facts before the detailed analysis. Max 10,000 characters.
- Root Cause Analysis — a detailed explanation of the root cause and contributing factors. Max 10,000 characters.
- Action Items — a list of remediation tasks with completion tracking. Max 50 items.
- Published — a toggle that controls public visibility of the report.
Both the executive summary and root cause analysis fields support Markdown.
Action items
Each action item includes:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Description | What needs to be done. Max 500 characters. |
| Status | Open, In Progress, or Done. |
| Owner | Optional owner or team name. Max 100 characters. |
| Expected completion | Optional ISO 8601 date (YYYY-MM-DD). |
| Actual completion | Optional ISO 8601 date (YYYY-MM-DD) when the work is done. |
| Public item | When off, the item is hidden from the public post-mortem page but remains visible in the admin console. |
| Public owner | When off, the owner name is hidden on the public post-mortem page. |
Use the up/down controls to reorder items. Display order on the public post-mortem page matches the order in the tab.
Publishing the report
Post-mortems are private by default. Toggle Publish Post-Mortem to make the report publicly visible. When published:
- A callout appears on the event's entry on all status dashboards linking to the post-mortem report.
- The post-mortem report is accessible at
/event/{id}/post-mortemon your status dashboards.
Unpublishing a post-mortem removes the callout and the public page immediately. The post-mortem data is retained and can be re-published at any time.
Publishing the post-mortem is independent of publishing the event itself — see Publish. When the event is published and event Notifications are enabled, publishing a post-mortem or saving changes while it is published can notify matching subscribers. Private draft saves, unpublishing the post-mortem, and changes on an unpublished event do not notify.
When dashboard Visibility is off, notification emails and SMS can still send on post-mortem changes for a published event, but they do not include a link to the post-mortem report. See Notifications overview — FAQ.