# Status page incidents

A status page incident tells your customers about a problem, in your words. It has a title, a status, public updates and an impact on each affected component. The impacts set the [status of the components](/status-pages/components) and the uptime bars. Your team's own [incidents](/incidents/introduction) stay internal until you publish to a status page.

## Statuses and impacts

Each update gives the incident a status. The incident has the status of its newest update.

| Status | Value | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Investigating | `investigating` | The cause is not known yet. |
| Identified | `identified` | The cause is known and someone works on it. |
| Monitoring | `monitoring` | A fix is out. The team watches whether it holds. |
| Resolved | `resolved` | The problem is over. |

Each affected component gets an impact: **Degraded** (`degraded_performance`), **Partial outage** (`partial_outage`) or **Full outage** (`major_outage`). **Not affected** means no impact. If the page has no components, the incident has one **Impact** of its own, and the headline of the page follows it.

## Publish an incident

Owners, managers and admins can publish incidents.

1. In the dashboard, open the status page and go to the **Incidents** tab.
2. Select **New public incident**.
3. Type a **Title**, for example `Elevated API error rates`.
4. Select the status.
5. Under **Affected components**, select an impact for each affected component.
6. Type the **Initial update**. You can use Markdown.
7. Optional: set **Happened at** to a time in the past. The default is now.
8. Optional: clear **Notify subscribers by email** to publish without an email.
9. Select **Publish incident**.

The incident shows on the public page at once. Each affected component gets its impact from the **Happened at** time. The headline follows the worst impact.

## Post an update

1. Open the incident on the **Incidents** tab.
2. In **Post update**, select the new status.
3. Change the impact of each component, if the impact changed.
4. Type the **Update**.
5. Optional: set **Happened at** and clear **Notify subscribers by email**.
6. Select **Post update**.

An update states the impact of each component as of its **Happened at** time. A changed impact starts at that time. A component that you set to **Not affected** stops being affected at that time.

If you select **Resolved**, Spectate ends every ongoing impact at the time of the update. The affected components go back to operational, unless another incident or a maintenance still affects them.

## Edit and delete updates

The **Public timeline** on the incident lists all updates, newest first. Point at an update to edit or delete it.

- **Edit** changes the **Status**, **Happened at** time and **Message** of the update. If you move **Happened at**, the impact changes of that update move with it.
- **Delete** removes the update. The impact periods stay.

Edits and deletes are silent. Spectate does not email subscribers again.

To change the title, use **Incident details** and select **Save incident**. These edits are also silent.

## Edit the impact timeline

The **Impact timeline** shows one row per component, with a bar for each period of impact. Use it to correct the history, for example if the outage started at 09:12 and you posted at 09:40.

- Select a bar to change the **Component**, the impact, **Started** or **Ended**, or to delete the period.
- Select **Add period** to add a period. Select **Ongoing** for a period that has not ended.

Periods of one component in one incident cannot overlap. **Ended** must be after **Started**. Both times can be at most one minute in the future. A resolved incident needs an end time on every period.

Spectate calculates the component status and uptime again after each edit. Timeline edits never email subscribers.

## Publish from a team incident

You can publish to a status page from a team incident. The public incident is linked to the team incident.

1. Open the incident under **Incidents** in the dashboard.
2. In the **Status pages** panel, select **Publish**.
3. Select the **Status page**.
4. Select the **Public status** and the impact of each component.
5. Type the **Subscriber-facing update**.
6. Optional: set **Happened at** and clear **Notify subscribers by email**.
7. Select **Publish update**.

The first publication creates the public incident, with the title of the team incident. Later publications to the same page add updates to that public incident. Your role must allow you to change both the incident and the status page.

You can also publish from [Slack](/alerting/slack) with `/spectate status-page`, or ask an AI assistant through the [MCP server](/developers/mcp).

## Automatic incidents

Monitors that are linked to components can open and resolve public incidents. Turn this on in **Settings → Automation**. An automatic incident has the label **Automatic** in the dashboard. If you post an update or edit its impact timeline, you take it over and automation stops changing it. See [automatic incidents from monitors](/status-pages/components#automatic-incidents-from-monitors).

## Write a public write-up

A write-up explains to visitors what happened, why, and what you change. It is separate from the internal [postmortem](/incidents/postmortems). Spectate never publishes the postmortem.

1. Open the incident on the **Incidents** tab.
2. In **Public write-up**, type the text in Markdown. Or select **Start from postmortem** to copy the postmortem of the linked team incident into the editor.
3. Select **Published on the status page**.
4. Optional: select **Email subscribers the write-up**.
5. Select **Publish write-up**.

A published write-up shows above the updates on the public incident page. Without **Published on the status page**, the write-up is a draft that only your team sees. Select **Save draft** to keep it.

Spectate emails the write-up only once, when you first publish it. Later edits never send an email. **Unpublish** removes the write-up from the public page.

## Delete an incident

Deleting removes the incident, its updates and its impact periods from the public page and from the uptime history. Spectate does not email subscribers. Resolving keeps the public history, so it is usually the better choice.

1. Open the incident and go to **Incident details**.
2. Select **Delete incident**.
3. Confirm with **Delete incident**.

## When Spectate emails subscribers

Spectate emails confirmed [subscribers](/status-pages/subscribers) in these cases, unless you clear **Notify subscribers by email**:

| Action | Email |
|---|---|
| Publish an incident | New incident |
| Post an update | Incident update |
| Post an update with **Resolved** | Resolved |
| Publish a write-up with **Email subscribers the write-up** | Write-up |
| Automation opens, updates or resolves an incident | As above, always |

Edits of details, updates and the impact timeline never send an email. Deleting never sends an email.

## Related

- [Components and their status](/status-pages/components)
- [Subscribers](/status-pages/subscribers)
- [Status page incidents in the API reference](/api-reference/status-page-incidents)