Observer
Observer

File your first incident

Walk a draft → publish → update → resolve incident through the console.

Incidents are the customer-facing comm layer that sits on top of metric-driven status. This page walks through filing one end to end: draft, publish, append a follow-up, resolve. Every step has an API equivalent (see the API tab) for IR automation.

Prerequisites

  • An organisation with at least one service. If services are not yet defined, create one under Services > New service before starting.
  • Optional: an SLO bound to the service. The auto-impact panel on the incident detail page only renders when an affected service has at least one SLO.

Steps

  1. Open the new-incident form

    In the console, navigate to Updates > Post update. Pick Incident as the type. The form prompts for severity, title, affected services, and customer visibility.

  2. Fill the headline

    • Severity: minor, major, or critical. The badge color on the public page follows this value.
    • Title: one customer-facing sentence (avoid jargon and internal IDs; this is what visitors will see at the top of the timeline).
    • Affected services: pick at least one. The auto-impact panel reads this list to compute SLO burn during the incident.
    • Visibility: leave empty for a public incident. Pick specific customers to scope the incident to those tenants only.

  3. Decide draft vs publish

    The form has two submit buttons:

    • Save as draft: creates the row but does not publish. The incident is editable; nothing renders on the public page or fires to webhook subscribers.
    • Publish now: sets published_at = now(), fires incident.published, and renders the incident on the public page.

    For the first incident, choose Save as draft so you can review the form before going customer-facing. The next step publishes.

  4. Append the first message

    Open the incident from the Updates list. The detail page shows an Auto-impact panel (live SLO burn, polled every 30 seconds), the message timeline, and a New message popover.

    Add a message of type Investigating with a brief description. The public page renders messages in chronological order under the incident header.

  5. Publish the incident

    Use the right-side rail action to publish. The incident now renders on the public page. Webhook subscribers receive incident.published and incident.message_added events.

  6. Resolve

    When the underlying issue clears, append a final message of type Resolved. Observer auto-marks the parent incident resolved (resolved_at populated, lifecycle pill flips to resolved, incident.resolved webhook fires).

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