# Incident report template

Consistency matters more than elegance here. A reader comparing two incidents should not have to work out where the same fact lives in each.

Copy the structure below. Leave a section out only when it genuinely does not apply, and say so rather than deleting it silently.

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## Header table

| **Field**                      | **Example**            |
| ------------------------------ | ---------------------- |
| Severity                       | P1, P2, or Degradation |
| Duration                       | 2 hours 40 minutes     |
| Scope, impact or affected apps | Diagram rendering only |

Three fields, chosen for the incident. Use Atlassian ticket references where the cause was a platform incident.

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## Sections, in order

* **What happened.** Plain language. Say early whether the cause was ours or the platform's.
* **Timeline (UTC).** Detection, escalation, identification, fix, recovery. Omit if the incident was not time-boxed.
* **How you would have known.** The symptoms a customer saw, so they can match this report to their experience.
* **Customer data.** Always present. State plainly what was and was not affected.
* **Resolution.** What fixed it, and what if anything customers had to do.

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## Rules

* Never invent a timestamp. If a time is not known, leave it out rather than approximating it silently.
* Say what was not affected as well as what was. It is usually the more useful half.
* Link the report from the affected product's troubleshooting section.
* Date the page title by month and year, so a list of them reads chronologically.

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## A few things worth knowing

* An incident with no customer-visible symptom does not need a public report. One that customers noticed does, even if it was brief.
* Write it while the detail is fresh. A report published a month later is an archaeology exercise.
* The template is a floor, not a ceiling. Add a root cause section when the cause is interesting.

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## Related

[Service incidentsReports written to this template.](https://help.gocapable.com/trust/service-incidents.html)

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_Same shape every time. That is the point._