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Customize incident severity levels

Incident severities in Grafana IRM provide a consistent way to measure the impact of incidents. Customizing these severity levels helps your team understand the urgency of an incident and respond appropriately.

Severity levels can influence your incident response process, such as who is engaged and how quickly you respond. To maximize their effectiveness, define each severity level clearly and ensure your team understands the expected response for each level.

Pre-configured severity levels

Grafana IRM provides the following recommended severity levels by default:

SeverityDescription
CriticalUrgently requires immediate attention.
MajorSignificant, blocking problem that requires help.
MinorMay be affecting customers, but no one is blocked.
PendingSeverity to be decided and should be determined as soon as possible.

If your organization uses different terminology or prioritization systems, you can customize these severity levels or add new ones to fit your needs.

Add incident severity levels

You can add custom severity levels to match your organization’s terminology and priorities.

  1. In the Grafana Cloud main menu, go to IRM > Settings.
  2. Select the Incidents tab.
  3. Under Severities, click Add new Severity.
  4. Provide the following information:
    • Label: A name for the severity level (such as P1, Critical, or High).
    • Level: A numerical value indicating the severity’s priority (e.g., 1 for highest priority).
    • Description: Optionally, provide details about when to use this severity level.
    • Icon: Optionally, select an icon to visually represent the severity.
  5. Click Save.

Edit incident severities

You can update existing severity levels to better align with your organization’s processes.

  1. In the Grafana Cloud main menu, go to IRM > Settings.
  2. Select the Incidents tab.
  3. Under Severities, click the pencil icon next to the severity you want to edit.
  4. Modify the Label, Description, Level, or Icon as needed.
  5. Click Save.

Note

Ensure your custom severity levels map to the corresponding pre-configured severity levels in Grafana IRM. For example, define your highest severity as Critical to match the default mapping.y.

Example: Mapping custom severities

If your organization uses P1-P4 as severity levels, you might map them as follows:

Custom severityPre-configured severity
Priority 1Critical
Priority 2Major
Priority 3Minor
Priority 4Pending

Archive and unarchive incident severities

Archiving severities allows you to remove those that aren’t relevant without deleting them permanently.

  1. In the Grafana Cloud main menu, go to IRM > Settings.
  2. Select the Incidents tab.
  3. Under Severities, click the Archive icon next to the severity you want to archive.
  4. To unarchive, locate the severity in the archived list and click Unarchive

Delete incident severities

If a severity level is no longer needed, you can delete it.

  1. In the Grafana Cloud main menu, go to IRM > Settings.
  2. Select the Incidents tab.
  3. Under Severities, click the Trash icon next to the severity you want to delete.
  4. Click Confirm remove to permanently delete the severity.