Eriksen Labs

Jira incident template

What is broken, for whom, since when, and where it stands now. Written to be updated while the incident is still going on.

Free to copy Standard team style

The template

Change it in the generator

Incident

[Service]: [symptom] since [time]

Priority
High
Labels
incident

Description

Impact

[What is broken, for whom, and how badly.]

Started

[Date and time, with time zone, and how it was noticed.]

Current status

[Investigating, identified, monitoring or resolved. Update this as it changes.]

Timeline

  • [HH:MM UTC] [What happened, or what was done]

Workaround

[What affected users can do in the meantime, if anything.]

Follow-up

  • Service restored and confirmed
  • Affected users told it is resolved
  • Post-incident review booked
Show it as Markdown 
### Impact

[What is broken, for whom, and how badly.]

### Started

[Date and time, with time zone, and how it was noticed.]

### Current status

[Investigating, identified, monitoring or resolved. Update this as it changes.]

### Timeline

- [HH:MM UTC] [What happened, or what was done]

### Workaround

[What affected users can do in the meantime, if anything.]

### Follow-up

- [ ] Service restored and confirmed
- [ ] Affected users told it is resolved
- [ ] Post-incident review booked

When to use it

Use it when a service is down or degraded for users, and several people need the same facts at once.

If your team handles incidents in Jira Service Management, its own incident features may suit you better. This template works in any Jira project.

One person's problem that is not an outage is a bug.

What each section is for

Impact
The first thing anyone joining asks. Update it as it changes.
Started
With a time zone: "since 10" means different things in Oslo and in New York.
Current status
One line, kept current, so nobody has to read the whole thread to know where things stand.
Timeline
Written as it happens. Rebuilding it afterwards takes longer and gets it wrong.
Workaround
Lets support answer customers while the fix is being worked on.
Who is doing what Detailed
One person leads and one person communicates, so two people do not do the same thing.
Updates Detailed
When the next update is due, so nobody has to ask for one.

Sections marked Detailed are not in the template above. Switch them on in the generator, where you can also edit the text and the checklist.

Want this to appear automatically in Jira’s Create dialog?

Issue Templates & Create Defaults for Jira fills in the summary, description, checklist, labels and priority from a template when someone opens Jira’s own Create dialog with one of the issue types you choose. Each field it fills carries a note saying where the text came from, and once someone writes their own summary or description, the app leaves the form alone.

To take a template from this page into the app with its formatting, paste it into an issue’s description, then, as a project or Jira administrator, choose Save as template from the issue’s ••• menu.

Submitted to the Atlassian Marketplace and awaiting approval.

About the app Documentation

Other templates

Or build your own in the Jira issue template generator, and see what Jira Cloud does on its own.