Create an incident
The moment you create an incident, three things happen at once: the public status page updates, every subscriber gets an email, and your Agent Stacks and Sidekick start checking inbound conversations against the new incident for matches. Speed matters; do this as soon as you confirm an issue is real.
Before you start
- You need a user role that can create incidents (typically Owner, Admin, or a custom role with incident write access).
- If you’ll link the incident to specific system pieces, those pieces need to exist as components. Components can be created first or added later.
Steps
1. Open the new-incident pane
Go to Incidents in the sidebar. Click New incident in the top-right. A slide-in pane opens from the right.
2. Write a clear, concise title
The title is what subscribers see in the subject line of their notification email and what visitors read first on the public page. Aim for a short factual headline:
- ✅ “API response times degraded”
- ✅ “Outbound email delivery delayed”
- ✅ “Scheduled maintenance — Authentication service”
- ❌ “Things are broken” (too vague)
- ❌ “We’re investigating reports of some kind of issue with the platform” (too long)
The title is required.
3. Pick a severity (optional)
Toggle severity on if you want it set, then pick Minor, Major, or Critical. Severity is optional — leave it off if your team doesn’t standardize around it. When set, the severity appears as a colored bar on the public page.
Rule of thumb:
- Minor — small issue, limited impact, some users may notice
- Major — significant issue, broad impact, core functionality impaired
- Critical — full outage or data-affecting issue
4. Pick the initial status
Choose between:
- Investigating (default) — you’re aware of the problem; cause is unknown
- Identified — you already know the cause when you create the incident
- Monitoring — a fix is already deployed and you’re just communicating that to customers
You can’t create an incident in the Resolved state — incidents must be created active.
5. Pick affected components
Open the Affected components picker and check every component impacted by this incident. You can pick zero, one, or many. Picking components doesn’t automatically change their statuses — you do that separately in Settings → Incidents Settings → Components.
If you haven’t configured components yet, skip this step. The incident will still be created and visible.
6. Write the first update
The textarea at the bottom is the initial update message. This is what subscribers receive in the first email and what visitors see at the top of the incident timeline.
A good first update names the symptom, what you know so far, and what you’re doing. Examples:
“We’ve identified elevated error rates on the payment processing service. Engineering is investigating. We’ll post the next update within 30 minutes.”
“We’re aware that the API is returning intermittent 502 errors for some customers. Investigating root cause now.”
The first-update message can be empty if you really want a content-free announcement, but most teams say at least one sentence.
7. Create the incident
Click Create incident (or press ⌘↵). The incident is created and you’re navigated to its workspace. The public status page, the dashboard, and any in-flight AI agent matching pick it up within seconds.
Verify it worked
Open the public status page (https://<your-tenant>.atender.dev/incidents/<your-slug> or your custom domain). The new incident should appear at the top of the Active section with the title, severity color, status badge, and the first update.
If you have subscribers, they receive their notification email within a minute or so.
In the dashboard’s Active Incidents card, the count goes up by one.
Troubleshooting
- Symptom: I clicked Create but nothing happened. Fix: Check the title field — title is required. The form shows a red message if it’s missing.
- Symptom: The incident is created but doesn’t appear on the public page. Fix: Hard-refresh the public page; it’s served with light caching. If the issue persists after a minute, check that you’re on the right tenant slug.
- Symptom: I want to attach a screenshot or log to the incident. Fix: Atender doesn’t support attachments on incidents today. Use plain text in the update body — you can paste URLs to external evidence (e.g., a Sentry trace) and they’ll render as clickable links.