Status Update Templates
Customize and standardize your status updates
Use custom Status Update Templates to standardize incident status communications. Free up time during incident response and keep stakeholders informed with consistent details and context.
Pricing Plan Availability
Status Update Templates are available to customers on our Business and Digital Operations plans. Please contact our Sales Team if you would like to upgrade to a plan with this feature.
Required User Permissions
Users with the following roles can create and edit Status Update Templates:
- Manager
- Global Admin
- Account Owner
Users with the following roles can use a Status Update Template during incident response:
- Responder
- Manager
- Global Admin
- Account Owner
Create a Template
Product Limit
You can add up to 100 templates to your account.
- In the web app, navigate to Incidents Status Update Templates.
- Click New Template.
- Enter a Name, an optional Description for the template, and click Create Template.
- In the Add Message section, enter your desired text in the Message field. This is the text that will appear in SMS, push and email status update notifications.

Add Message
- In the Edit Email section, enter a Subject and use the rich text editor to make any customizations to the default email status update notification.
- Please see the Variables in Email Notifications section for more information about including dynamic content in email status update notifications.
- Click Save.
- Before saving, you can click Preview at any time to see what the message will look like in each notification channel.
Variables in Email Notifications
Email status update notifications can dynamically include information about the status update or incident.
While editing the email status update notification's content in the rich text editor:
- Place your cursor where you'd like the variable to appear.
- From the Insert Variables panel, select a variable.
- The variable will appear in the email body between double curly braces, e.g.,
{{ status_update.message }}
.

Status update message variable
The most common variables are listed by default, however you may also enter a term to search through a more complete list of objects and their associated attributes. Please refer to the FAQ below full list of supported variables.

Search variables
Support for Liquid
If you'd like to create conditional communications, Status Update Templates support the Liquid templating language in all configurable fields: Message, and email Subject and Body.
When referring to variables inside a Liquid tag, please omit the double curly braces, {{ ... }}
. For example, the following snippet will transform the incident title to uppercase for incidents with a "P1" priority, and otherwise leave it unchanged: {% if incident.priority.name == "P1" %}{{ incident.title | upcase }}{% else %}{{ incident.title}}{% endif %}
Please note the following Liquid tags are not supported:
tablerow
liquid
echo
render
include
Edit a Template
- In the web app, navigate to Incidents Status Update Templates.
- From the list of templates, click Edit to the right of the template you wish to edit.
- Make your desired changes to the template.
- Click Save.
Duplicate a Template
- In the web app, navigate to Incidents Status Update Templates.
- From the list of templates, click Duplicate to the right of the template you wish to duplicate.
- Give the template a new Name and Description.
- Click Duplicate Template.
Delete a Template
- In the web app, navigate to Incidents Status Update Templates.
- From the list of templates, click Delete to the right of the template you wish to delete.
- In the confirmation modal, click Delete.
Use a Status Update Template During Incident Response
- Navigate to an incident's detail page and select the Status Updates tab.
- Click New Update.
- From the dropdown, select a communication template and click Preview.
- Optional: If needed, adjust the pre-populated text in the field Add update message.
- Adjustments in this field will also be reflected in the email body.

Status Update Template
- When you’re satisfied with the status update’s content, click Send Message to notify incident subscribers.
FAQ
What is the full list of supported variables?
Expand
The following table details the full list of variables you can use in your status update templates:
Object | Key | Example Value |
---|---|---|
status_update | created_at | 2015-10-06T21:30:42Z |
message | This is a message that came from the status update UI. | |
sender | id | PXPGF42 |
html_url | https://subdomain.pagerduty.com/users/PXPGF42 | |
name | Earline Greenholt | |
email | [email protected] | |
description | I'm the boss | |
incident | id | Q0U747RKFEV100 |
summary | [#1234] The server is on fire. | |
html_url | https://subdomain.pagerduty.com/incidents/PT4KHLK | |
incident_number | 1234 | |
created_at | 2015-10-06T21:30:42Z | |
status | acknowledged | |
title | The server is on fire. | |
last_status_change_at | 2022-08-15T16:57:40Z | |
priority.name | P2 | |
service.id | PAW0B9L | |
service.summary | Technical Service Name | |
service.html_url | https://subdomain.pagerduty.com/service-directory/PAW0B9L | |
teams[0].id | PP2R1SK | |
teams[0].summary | Billing Support | |
teams[0].html_url | https://subdomain.pagerduty.com/teams/PP2R1SK | |
last_status_change_by.id | PAW0B9L | |
last_status_change_by.type | service_reference | |
last_status_change_by.summary | Technical Service Name | |
last_status_change_by.html_url | https://subdomain.pagerduty.com/service-directory/PAW0B9L | |
impacted_services.id | PAW0B9L | |
impacted_services.summary | Technical Service Name | |
impacted_services.html_url | https://subdomain.pagerduty.com/service-directory/PAW0B9L | |
acknowledgements[0].at | 2022-08-18T14:28:44Z | |
acknowledgements[0]. acknowledger.summary | Earline Greenholt | |
acknowledgements[0]. acknowledger.type | user | |
acknowledgements[0]. acknowledger. html_url | https://subdomain.pagerduty.com/users/PXPGF42 | |
conference_bridge.conference_number * | +1-415-555-1212,,,,1234# | |
conference_bridge.conference_url * | https://example.com/123-456-789 | |
slack_channel.name | Slack Channel Name | |
slack_channel.url | https://slack.com/app_redirect?channel=somechannel&team=someteam | |
impacted_business_services[0].id | PD1234 | |
impacted_business_services[0].summary | Web API |
* If an incident has its own conference bridge, this value will be shown. If not, and the conference bridge is configured at the service level, information for the service-level conference bridge will be shown. If no conference bridge information is available, this value will be empty.
Updated about 1 month ago