Severity Levels
Configure severity levels and how they appear on status dashboards.
Severity levels classify how much impact an incident or maintenance event has on your services. Configure labels, colors, and icons on Severities; the platform derives each event's displayed severity from its highest-severity affected component.
How severity is derived
Severity levels classify the impact of events on your services. Each severity has a label, description, color, and icon that appear on your status dashboard and in event updates.
Severity applies to incidents and maintenance events only. Informational events have no severity because they have no affected components.
You do not manually set an event's severity in the API — it is automatically determined on the server from the highest-severity affected component when you create or update an incident or maintenance event. Severity levels are ordered by the configuration below; the component with the highest-order severity determines the event severity returned in API responses and shown on status dashboards.
Informational events have no severity. Components referenced on an informational notice are for notification routing only and do not contribute to any severity calculation.
Default severity levels
Every new organization starts with these three levels:
| Order | Label | Default Color | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Degraded Performance | #CA8A04 | Minor service issues, some users may see slow performance. |
| 2 | Partial Outage | #EA580C | A major feature or part of the service is unavailable. |
| 3 | Major Outage | #991B1B | A critical service is completely down or all users are affected. |
Managing severity levels
Adding a severity
- Click Add Severity.
- Fill in the Label (required, must be unique), Description, Icon, and Color.
- Click Add — the level is saved immediately.
Editing a severity
Click the pencil icon on any row. Update the fields and click Save.
Reordering
Use the up/down arrows on the left of each row to change the display order. Changes are saved immediately.
Deleting a severity
Click the trash icon on a severity row. A confirmation dialog will appear before deletion.
Open incidents and maintenance events keep the severity label, color, and icon captured on the event when you delete or rename a level in Settings. Those snapshots do not change retroactively.
For component status on the public dashboard, the platform ranks active events by severity. If an open event still references a deleted or old label, that snapshot is treated as high impact for ranking so the dashboard does not understate service impact. The badge may appear in neutral gray when the label no longer exists in your current configuration.
To fully align live dashboard status with your updated severity list, close affected events or update their affected components to use current labels.
Constraints:
- Minimum 1 severity level — you cannot delete the last remaining level.
- Maximum severity levels — the Add button is disabled once your organization's limit is reached.
- Labels must be unique within your organization (case-insensitive).
- Label max 50 characters; description is required, max 150 characters.
- Severity
ordervalues must be unique and contiguous from 1 through the severity count.
Severity fields
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
label | Short display name shown on the status dashboard and in event details. Max 50 characters; unique within your organization (case-insensitive). |
description | Required human-readable explanation of what this severity means. Max 150 characters. |
icon | Lucide icon key chosen from the approved icon set (e.g. alert-triangle). |
defaultColor | Hex color used for the icon and badge on the status dashboard. |
order | 1-based integer controlling display order. Must be unique and contiguous from 1 through the severity count. |
Frequently asked questions
Do severity levels affect informational events?
No. Informational events have no affected components, so no severity is derived or displayed. Severity applies only to incidents and maintenance.
What happens to an event's severity display if I edit a severity level?
All severity display properties — label, description, color, and icon — are captured as a snapshot at the time the component is associated with an event. Editing a severity's label, color, description, or icon after that point does not retroactively change how existing events appear. Historical events preserve the display values from when they were written. Only new events — or events where you explicitly update the affected components — will reflect the updated severity properties.
Can I have two severity levels with the same color?
Yes — color is purely cosmetic and does not need to be unique. Only the label must be unique within your organization.
What happens when an affected component is removed from an event?
The event severity is recalculated from the remaining components when you update affectedComponents via the API or save in the event editor. If all components are removed, the event has no severity.
What happens if I delete or rename a severity that open events still use?
The event and component snapshots on those events keep the label and display values from when they were written — they are not rewritten when you change Settings.
On the public dashboard, component status is computed from all active published events on that component. A snapshot whose label no longer exists in your configuration still counts as high impact for ranking, so impact is not understated when a lower-severity event is also active. The badge may show in neutral gray because the label is no longer in your current palette.
Renaming a severity is equivalent to deleting the old label for open events: existing snapshots retain the previous label until you close the event or update its affected components.