When an incident triggers, there are a number of manual actions you may want to take, depending on your workflow or the specifics of the situation:

• Merge Incidents
• Snooze an Incident
• Edit Incident Title
• Edit Incident Priority
• Edit Incident Urgency
• Reassign an Incident's Service
• Edit Incident Duration
• Add a Note to an Incident

Merge Incidents

Merging multiple incidents into a single incident streamlines the notification and resolution process. Merging incidents also consolidates alert information into a single incident, helping responders identify an issue's root cause and impact.

Merge Incidents Using the Web App

There are three places to merge incidents in the web app:

• On the Incidents Page
• On an Incident's Details Page
• On a Service's Details Page

On the Incidents Page

1. On the Incidents page, select the checkboxes next to the incidents you want to merge.
2. Click Merge Incidents.
3. In the modal, select the incident you want to group the alerts under. In the Select the incident to merge into field, sort incidents by Selected Incidents, Assigned to me, or Assigned to my team.
4. (Optional) Update the Incident Title if a different title would better describe the issue.
5. Click Merge incidents and [X] Alerts.

The incident dashboard shows the merged incident. Select the incident to view alerts from all merged incidents under the Alerts section.

On an Incident's Details Page

1. Select an incident to view its details page.
2. Click More Merge with Another Incident.
3. Enter an incident number and click Find Incident.
4. Click Merge Incident and [X] Alerts.

On a Service's Details Page

1. Navigate to Services Service Directory.
2. Select the service to view its details page.
3. Select the checkboxes next to the incidents you want to merge.
4. Click Merge Incidents.
5. In the Merge Incidents modal, select the radio button of the incident you want to merge into.
6. Click Merge. The remaining selected incidents are resolved after the merge is complete.

Merge Incidents Using the Mobile App

1. On the Open Incidents screen, tap (iOS) / (Android) in the top right and tap Select Incidents.
2. Select the radio buttons to the left of the incidents you want to merge, then tap Change (X) Merge X incidents (iOS) or Merge (Android).
3. Select the incident you want to merge into. A confirmation dialog appears at the bottom of the screen indicating the incidents have been merged.

⚠️

Alert Maximum

An incident cannot have more than 1,000 alerts. You cannot merge incidents if their combined total exceeds 1,000 alerts.

Merge Behavior

• When you merge multiple incidents, alerts are consolidated into the target incident. The other selected incidents are resolved with the resolution reason listed as Merged, and reference the target incident.

• The deduplication key (Alert Key) does not change, but moves so that it is under a single incident with other deduplication keys.
• If you are using a bidirectional integration such as the Slack integration, merged incidents appear as resolved and reference the new target incident where all alerts are aggregated.

• Responders from source incidents are not merged into the target incident. The target incident's responders are preserved, and all alerts are assigned to them. You can view these users in the Timeline tab on the incident's details page.
• Subscribers from source incidents are not merged into the target incident. They must be re-added to the target incident.

Move Alerts to Another Incident

If an alert is incorrectly merged, there are two ways to move it to a new or existing incident:

On the Incident's Page

1. Navigate to an incident's details page and scroll to the Alerts section.
2. Select the checkbox of the alert you want to move.
3. In the Move dropdown, select Create new incident.

4. (Optional) Click Edit Incident to edit the incident details.
5. Click Create Incident.

On an Alert's Page

1. Navigate to an incident's details page.
2. In the Alerts section, click an alert's Summary to navigate to its details page.
3. Click Move to Another Incident.

4. Enter an incident number and click Find Incident.
5. Click Move Alert.

Merged Incidents and Webhooks

If you have configured webhooks, merging alerts into another incident sends a webhook for the source incident with a resolve_reason of merged.

Webhooks continue to update the target incident, but all incidents merged into it are marked as resolved.

Webhook updates are only sent for services with open incidents. For example, if you merge an incident from Service A into an incident on Service B, updates are sent only on Service B webhooks.

For incidents that were resolved when they merged into a target incident, resolve webhooks trigger if configured. These incidents contain a reference to the target incident. In the webhook body, the resolve_reason object provides detailed information about the target incident and indicates that the type is merge_resolve_reason.

Snooze an Incident

Responders can use the snooze feature to prevent an acknowledged incident from escalating while they are working on the issue. You can snooze an incident for the following intervals: 1 hour, 4 hours, 8 hours, 24 hours, or Other. If you choose Other, the maximum length is 168 hours (one week).

Snooze is only available for acknowledged incidents. If you do not resolve the incident before the snooze timer expires, the incident returns to a triggered state and notifies you again according to your notification rules. If a different user has come on call since the incident was triggered — for example, due to a rotation on a schedule — both users are notified.

The incident log captures all snooze actions taken on an incident.

Snooze an Incident in the Web App

1. Acknowledge the incident. Snooze replaces the Acknowledge button.
2. Select Snooze and choose the length of time you want to snooze the incident.

📘

Add an Escalation Policy as a Responder

If you add responders to an incident and select an escalation policy, snoozing does not prevent the incident from escalating.

If you select Other, you can set a custom snooze time, snooze until a time tomorrow, or base your snooze on a service's support hours.

Snooze an Incident in the Mobile App

1. Acknowledge the incident. Snooze replaces the Acknowledge button.
2. Select Snooze and choose the length of time:
   • 1 hour
   • 4 hours
   • 24 hours
   • for
   • until

Reassign a Snoozed Incident

Reassigning a snoozed incident cancels the snooze timer. The acknowledgement timeout resets to the triggering service's default value.

Acknowledge a Snoozed Incident

If another user acknowledges a snoozed incident, the incident exits the snoozed state and the acknowledgement timeout resets.

Auto-Resolution and Snooze

You can configure services to automatically resolve an incident after a predetermined period of time — this is called auto-resolution. If an incident is snoozed past the time when auto-resolution would have resolved it (for example, auto-resolution is set to six hours but the incident is snoozed for 12 hours), the incident remains snoozed and does not automatically resolve. When the incident returns to an acknowledged or triggered state, the auto-resolution timer resets.

Edit Incident Title

You can change an incident's title as it progresses or as the underlying issue becomes clearer.

Edit Incident Title in the Web App

1. Select an incident's Title to navigate to its details page.
2. Click Edit to the right of the incident's title.
3. Update the title.
4. Click Save.

Edit Incident Title in the Mobile App

1. Select an incident to navigate to its details page.
2. With the Triage tab selected, tap Edit Title.
3. Enter a new title.
4. Tap Save.

Edit Incident Priority

Incident priority indicates an incident's relative importance (for example, P-1, P-2). You can adjust an incident's priority if its impact grows or shrinks during the course of response. Refer to Incident Priority for more information.

Edit Incident Urgency

If it becomes clear during the course of an incident that the urgency should change, you can edit it.

Edit Incident Urgency in the Web App

1. Select an incident's Title to navigate to its details page.
2. Click the Urgency dropdown and select High or Low.

Edit Incident Urgency in the Mobile App

1. Select an incident to navigate to its details page.
2. With the Triage tab selected, tap Change to Low/High Urgency.
3. Confirm your selection by tapping Change Urgency.

⚠️

Editing Urgency on Unacknowledged Incidents

If you acknowledge an incident and change its urgency from low to high, it returns to an unacknowledged state. Escalation then continues, notifying responders using their high-urgency notification rules.

Reassign an Incident's Service

Every PagerDuty incident has the following:

• Main Service: The technical service the incident is assigned to. You can change an incident's main service by reassigning it to a different service.
• Impacted Services: Services included in an incident's alert grouping. You cannot manually change or reassign these services.

A service is automatically included as an impacted service when one of the following three actions occurs:

• Merging incidents that were created across multiple services into a single incident.
• Globally grouping alerts across multiple services into a single incident.
• Reassigning an incident's service. To ensure alert grouping continues after reassignment across services, the alert group (including the alert key or deduplication key) does not change. The original service remains as an impacted service because alerts from the original service continue feeding into the incident.

📘

Service Reassignment

Consider the following when assigning an incident to a different service:

• Acknowledged incidents return to a triggered state.
• If the new service uses a different escalation policy, the current incident's assignee is removed and replaced with the on-call responder from the new service.
• Incident Roles, Incident Tasks, Custom Fields, and Incident Workflows are not altered.
• After reassigning the incident, it continues to participate in Alert Grouping based on the originating service's alert grouping settings.
• A record of the reassignment appears in the incident's timeline, including the originating service and the user who made the change.

Reassign an Incident in the Web App

Incident Details Page

1. Navigate to the Incidents page and click an incident's title to view its details.
2. In the Main Service field, click .

3. In the Change Service modal, select a service from the dropdown.
4. Click Change Service.

Operations Console

📘

Availability

The Operations Console is available with the PagerDuty AIOps add-on. To sign up for a trial of PagerDuty AIOps features, read PagerDuty AIOps Trials.

1. Navigate to AIOps Operations Console.
2. Click the Incident Title or Alert to open the side panel.
3. In the Main Service field, click Edit to the right of the service's name.
4. In the modal, select a different service from the dropdown.
5. Click Change Service.

Reassign an Incident in the Mobile App

1. Navigate to Incidents.
2. Tap an incident to view its details page.
3. In the Triage tab, scroll left in the incident actions carousel and tap Change Service.
4. Tap a service to select it from the My Teams or All tab. A confirmation modal appears.
5. Tap Confirm to reassign the incident to the new service.

Reassign an Incident in ServiceNow

⚠️

Prerequisites

• The Service Reassignment feature is available with ServiceNow 8.2. Upgrade to the latest version to realize the full feature value.
• To configure Service Reassignment, refer to Sync Service Reassignment with ServiceNow.

With ServiceNow 8.2, the Service Reassignment feature enables bidirectional sync between ServiceNow and PagerDuty when incidents are reassigned to different Configuration Items (CIs) in ServiceNow or to different services in PagerDuty.

To reassign in both systems, refer to the following documentation:

• ServiceNow: Associate CIs with Incident
• PagerDuty: Reassign an Incident's Service

⚠️

Service Reassignment Unavailability in Certain Integrations

Service reassignment is not available for Jira Cloud, Jira Server, or Zendesk integrations. If you reassign a linked PagerDuty incident to a different technical service, the incident remains linked to the issue or ticket, but synchronization rules tied to the original technical service no longer apply.

Edit Incident Duration

📘

Incident Status Requirement and Pricing Plan Availability

You can edit an incident's duration only once it is resolved. This feature is not available while an incident is triggered or acknowledged.

All pricing plans support editing resolved incident duration. You can view adjusted incident durations in Insights reports by adding the User Defined Response Effort column to your table view. When you edit this value, it replaces the original Response Effort value and is used for Total response effort values in the Service Performance, Team, and Escalation Policy Insights reports.

PagerDuty tracks incident duration to calculate metrics such as Response Effort and MTTR (Mean Time To Resolve).

Sometimes, the actual effort spent on an incident differs from the total time it was open. To provide more accurate metrics in your Intelligent Dashboards, you can adjust the incident duration to reflect the actual response effort required.

📘

Note

The User Defined Effort metric in the Incident Activity (Incidents List) report reflects adjusted incident duration times.

Edit Incident Duration in the Web App

1. On a resolved incident's details page, click under Duration.

2. In the Update Incident Times modal, enter the Actual effort time in the following format: xd xh xm.
3. Click Update Incident.

📘

Edited Incident Durations in Insights Reports

The Insights feature calculates Response Effort in the Service Performance, Team, and Escalation Policy reports using the edited incident duration, if it exists.

The Responder report does not use edited incident durations, as response efforts are calculated based on responder activity rather than incident activity.

Add a Note to an Incident

Incident notes help responders resolve incidents faster by adding relevant information or links. Notes are useful for teams responding to active incidents and add helpful context for later reference. You can add notes to open and resolved incidents.

Add a Note Using the Web App

1. On the Incidents page, select an incident's Title to navigate to its details page.
2. In the Notes section on the right-hand side, enter a note in the text field and click Add Note.
3. To edit or delete a note, open the more actions (…) menu next to the note.

Add a Note Using the Mobile App

1. Navigate to Open Incidents or Resolved Incidents select an incident to navigate to its details screen.
2. On iOS, tap More at the bottom of the screen and tap Add Note. On Android, under the Triage tab, tap Add Note.

3. Enter the text for your note and tap Post Note.

Add a Note in Incident Workflows

Incident Workflows allow you to automate your incident response processes. The following workflow actions add incident notes:

• Add Note to an Incident
• Prompt to Add a Note to the Incident (Slack)

Add a Note in Event Orchestration

📘

Availability

Adding notes using Event Orchestration is available in Advanced Event Orchestration. Contact the Sales team to change your pricing tier.

You can automate adding notes to incidents as part of Event Orchestration. While configuring a Global or Service Orchestration Rule, select the Incident Data tab and enter your desired text in the Add incident note section.

Notes added by Event Orchestration appear on an incident's details page under the Notes section, with An Orchestration Event Rule listed as the note's author.