Event Types
Incidents
An unplanned disruption or degradation of service.
Use an incident when an unplanned disruption or degradation affects one or more services. Incidents require a start time, affected components with severity, and a public timeline that drives resolution and end time on your status dashboards.
Times
An incident represents an unplanned disruption or degradation of service. Incidents:
- Require a start time — set when you create the incident and can be backdated
- Require at least one affected component with a severity assigned
- Have their severity auto-derived from the highest-severity affected component
- Drive an incident workflow lifecycle (e.g. Investigating → Identified → Monitoring → Resolved)
- Track a public timeline of status updates visible on the status dashboard
| Time | How it's set |
|---|---|
| Start time | You provide it at creation (required). Can be backdated to when the incident actually began. |
| End time | Automatically set to the timestamp of the final timeline entry (e.g. "Resolved"). Can be overridden via direct edit. |
The first timeline entry's timestamp is always synced to the incident's start time — they are the same value when the incident is created.
On the Description tab, you can optionally add Impact Analysis after the description. When set, it appears on status dashboard event cards and in full subscriber notifications (after the description, before affected components).
Backdating the start time is encouraged for SLA accuracy. If a customer reported an issue 30 minutes before you opened the incident, set the start time to when the incident actually began — not when you created the record.