Quick Declare lets you declare an incident without first selecting an impacted technical service. It is designed for incident responders and on-call engineers who know something is wrong but do not yet know which service or team owns the problem — for example, a suspected major issue where selecting the wrong technical service could mobilize the wrong team.

Quick Declare removes the service requirement so you can open an incident, pull in responders, and start coordinating right away, then set the impacted service once you know it. By removing this early decision, teams can assemble faster, validate impact sooner, and route the incident to the correct team with confidence.

Configuration

Quick Declare does not require any configuration. It is available on the incident creation form in the web app and in Slack — the Impacted Service field is optional, and incidents declared without a service route through the built-in Default Mobilization Service.

Configure the Default Mobilization Service Escalation Policy (Optional)

The Default Mobilization Service escalation policy is an empty, internal, account-level escalation policy that ships with your account. An admin may configure it by navigating to People Escalation Policies Default Mobilization EP.

An administrator can add responders to the Default Mobilization Service escalation policy — for example, a standing group of incident commanders who should always be looped in on early-stage incidents. When you assign responders to this escalation policy, PagerDuty notifies them as the first responders whenever an incident is created without a technical service.

Disable Default Mobilization

Default Mobilization is enabled by default. An administrator can disable it by navigating to Account Settings Incident Settings and deselecting Allow default mobilization. By disabling this, the Impacted Service field will be required when declaring incidents.

Core Concepts

The Default Mobilization Service

When you declare an incident without selecting a technical service, PagerDuty routes it to a built-in service called the Default Mobilization Service. This is an internal, account-level service that ships with your account and includes an escalation policy and a schedule.

The Default Mobilization Service supports two behaviors, depending on whether its escalation policy has anyone assigned.

1. Default Mobilization Service escalation policy is empty (default behavior): Out of the box, the Default Mobilization Service escalation policy is empty and no one is on call. When you declare an incident this way:
   • No one is automatically paged. You become the incident owner, and the incident is acknowledged automatically because you are the assignee.
   • Add responders and set the impacted service. A message in the incident details guides you to page the right people or assign the service that owns the problem.
   • This is the fastest, lowest-friction path: declare now, and figure out ownership next.
2. Default Mobilization Service escalation policy is configured (responders assigned): When an administrator has assigned responders to the escalation policy and you declare an incident without a technical service:
   • Those responders are notified as the first responders.
   • Your next step is still to set the impacted service so the incident routes to the team that owns the problem.

Impacted Service Display

When an incident is declared without a technical service, its Impacted Service shows as -- (not set) on the incident details page and in the incident list, so it is clear that a service has not yet been assigned.

Use Quick Declare

Declare an Incident in the Web App

1. Click + New Incident.
2. Enter an incident title.
3. Leave the Impacted Service field blank. The field is optional, and there is no required-field indicator.
4. Click Declare. The incident is created and routed through the Default Mobilization Service, and a call to action appears to add responders and set the impacted service.

Declare an Incident in Slack

1. In your Slack channel, run /pd declare.
2. Enter the incident name.
3. Leave Impacted Service unselected. The field is optional.
4. Click Declare. A confirmation card appears; its content depends on how the Default Mobilization Service escalation policy is configured.

Set the Impacted Service or Add Responders

Once the incident is open, you have two primary next steps.

• Set the impacted service. Setting the impacted service on an open Quick Declare incident works as a standard service reassignment — it routes the incident to the correct team and triggers that service's escalation path. Once set, the incident behaves like any other incident tied to that service.
• Add responders. You can page additional users or escalation policies into the incident at any time, whether or not a service has been set.

Resolve a Quick Declare Incident

Sometimes an early signal turns out to be a false positive. You do not need to assign a technical service before resolving. An incident still assigned to the Default Mobilization Service can be resolved normally — there is no block and no requirement to pick a service first.

FAQ