Within an organization, there are often many different types of incidents that require a unique response process. For example, a major incident typically follows a different process than a security incident or compliance incident. The Incident Types feature allows organizations to create custom types that determine the set of Custom Fields available on an incident, tailored to their diverse response processes. By categorizing incidents, teams can reduce confusion and ensure that they engage the right processes and responders for each incident type, leading to quicker resolution and minimized business impact.

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Availability

Pricing Plan	Access to Base and Major Incident Types	Access to Security Incident Type	Custom Incident Types
Legacy Plans	✔️	-	-
Free (current)	✔️	✔️	-
Professional (current)	✔️	✔️	-
Business (current)	✔️	✔️	Three
Enterprise (current)	✔️	✔️	100 with up to three levels of nesting.

Contact the Sales Team to expand your account's Incident Types functionality.

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Required User Permissions

• All users, except for Limited Stakeholders, can view Incident Types.
• Any user with permission to create an incident can select an Incident Type at incident creation.
• Users with Responder permissions on an incident can update its type.
• Admins and the Account Owner can create and edit Incident Types.

Incident Type Foundational Concepts

Inheritance

Incident Types use an inheritance model. When you add a new custom field to a type, that field is also added to all of the type's children. This model provides the flexibility to add custom fields to all incidents in an account, or to concentrate them to a specific incident type.

While creating a new incident type, you will specify a Parent Type, which defines where in the hierarchy the new type will live. You can have at most three levels of inheritance on your account.

Click the Display Inherited Fields checkbox while configuring an Incident Type to view which fields are inherited:

Default Incident Types

All pricing plans, including legacy plans, have access to the Base Incident and Major Incident default types. In addition, customers on current Free, Professional, Business, and Enterprise pricing plans have access to Security Incidents, a third default type. These are described below:

• Base Incident - By default, all incidents created are a “Base Incident”. The Base Incident is also always at the top of the inheritance hierarchy. You can use the Base Incident to add fields that should apply globally to all incidents within PagerDuty.
• Major Incident - The Major Incident is used for configuring your major incident response process. You can use this default incident type for tasks such as triggering a major incident workflow, creating custom fields specific to major incidents, and more.
• Security Incident - An incident caused by a potential security threat that requires specialized investigation and response.

Typically, these default incident types are configured to work out of the box. However, some customers may need to enable them to start creating incidents of that type. Refer to Enable an Incident Type for more information.

Configure Incident Types

Create an Incident Type

To create an Incident Type in the PagerDuty web app:

1. Navigate to Incidents Incident Types.
2. In the left pane, click New Incident Type.
3. Enter the following information:

4. Click Create.

Add Custom Fields

After creating an Incident Type, you can add custom fields to that type. Refer to the Configure Custom Fields article for more information.

Edit Incident Types

1. Navigate to Incidents Incident Types.
2. Select your preferred Incident Type.
3. Make your desired changes (e.g., Add Fields or adjust Settings).
4. Click Save.

Disable or Enable Incident Types

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Delete Incident Types

Deleting Incident Types is not supported. You can disable an incident type to make it unavailable to responders when selecting a type on an incident.

Perform the following steps to disable or enable incident types:

1. Navigate to Incidents Incident Types.
2. Select any child of the Base Incident type.
3. Click the Settings tab.
4. Select Disable in the Enable Incident Type dropdown.
5. Click Save.

Note: To disable an Incident Type, you must also disable any child types.

Set Incident Type on an Incident

By default, all incidents created are a “Base Incident”. The Base Incident is at the top of the inheritance hierarchy.

Set or Change an Incident Type

Set or Change an Incident Type in the Web App

1. Navigate to Incidents.
2. Select the incident you want to modify.
3. Above the incident title, select an Incident Type from the dropdown. A confirmation modal appears, prompting you to confirm whether the field should be added or removed from the incident.

3. Click Change Incident Type to confirm.

Set or Change an Incident Type in the Mobile App

1. Navigate to Incidents.
2. Select the incident you want to modify.
3. In the carousel menu under the Triage tab, tap Set Type.
4. Select the Incident Type.
5. Tap Change Type to confirm.

Set or Change an Incident Type Using Slack

1. In a dedicated incident channel, enter the /pd type command, or click More Actions on an incident notification and select Change Type.
2. Select the Incident Type.
3. Click Save to confirm.

Set or Change an Incident Type Using Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams

1. On a PagerDuty incident's card, click and select Change Type.
2. Select the Incident Type.
3. Click Save.

Set or Change an Incident Type Using ServiceNow

You can change the incident’s type from the incident actions menu in ServiceNow after enabling this feature in the integration. Refer to the Sync Incident Types with Service article for more information.

Set or Change an Incident Type Using API

You can update an incident’s type using the Update Incident API endpoint.

Set or Change an Incident Type Using Incident Workflows

You can update an incident's type using Incident Workflows with the Update Incident Type action.

View Incident Types on Incidents

You can view Incident Types in multiple ways:

View Incident Types in the Web App

Incident Types are viewable on:

• The Incidents page under the Type column.
• The incident details page directly above the incident title.

View Incident Types in the Mobile App

Incident Types are viewable on:

• The Incidents page directly above the incident status (e.g., above “Triggered” or “Acknowledged”).
• The incident details page directly above the incident status.

View Incident Types Using Slack

Incident Types are viewable on incident notifications under the Type heading.

View Incident Types Using Microsoft Teams

Incident Types are viewable on an incident notification under the Type heading.

View Incident Types Using ServiceNow

Incident Types are viewable on the ServiceNow incident after enabling this feature in the integration. Refer to Advanced ServiceNow Configuration for enablement and configuration steps.

FAQ

When is a good time to use Incident Types?

A good time to use Incident Types is whenever there is a unique incident process to follow. Your organization's process for major incidents, including required metadata to capture and remediation steps, is likely very different from the one for lower-severity incidents. Incident Types are ideal for guiding responders through these differences and capturing variations in response processes.

There are two main categories for when different processes (i.e., Incident Types) are relevant:

• Organizational structure: Within scaled companies, organizational structure frequently defines where one process ends and another begins. Within these businesses, one part of the organization may look to follow a different process than other areas of the company. In these scenarios, it often makes sense to define an Incident Type that aligns with each business unit's processes.
• Business impact: Another common use case for an Incident Type is a security incident. Unlike in the organizational structure example above, security incidents may follow a consistent process across all parts of the organization. However, their process may differ from other incidents, such as a major incident.

Can I trigger Incident Workflows conditionally based on Incident Type?

Yes. From Incident Workflows, you can use the Conditional Trigger to trigger a workflow for specific Incident Types. For example, you could trigger a Major Incident Workflow whenever a Major Incident triggers.