Customize your incident response with new features in Grafana Cloud IRM

No matter where or how you work, we all have the same goal when an incident occurs: to get it resolved effectively and efficiently—and as quickly as possible. However, the way we achieve that goal isn’t always the same.

We understand that different organizations operate differently, so you need flexibility from your IRM tooling. That’s why we’re designing Grafana Cloud IRM so you can embed it into your existing incident response processes, rather than forcing you to a more prescriptive approach that doesn’t account for your specific needs.

In this blog, we’ll walk you through some of our recent updates that can help you customize your Grafana Cloud IRM configurations and get better control over who has access to a new incident channel.

New ways to tailor Grafana Cloud IRM to your needs

Earlier this year we launched Grafana Cloud IRM, combining Grafana OnCall and Grafana Incident into one unified app in Grafana Cloud. This shift provides a more consistent user experience across Incident and OnCall, which is important when you’re trying to understand the complexity of your system and resolve any potential issues.

Now, we’re adding these new features to help you further customize the way your team interacts with the app.

Custom incident status

You now have more fine-grained control over the status or phase of an incident. Previously, you were limited to “Active” and “Resolved” as your status options, but active can have many different meanings. Now, similar to custom severities, you can create your own set of status options, such as “Identified” or “Mitigated.”

This can help you create a more well-defined set of incident response stages to fit your organization’s needs. It also gives all the stakeholders (upwards and downwards) better visibility into what’s happening. This is particularly important for larger organizations that have multiple teams and individuals that need to stay informed when an incident occurs. 

Custom metadata fields

Trying to figure out which team was involved in an incident? Or maybe which services were impacted? With custom metadata fields, you can do just that. For example, you could add an open text field so users can add notes about an incident. Or you could add a multi-select text field to enter different teams that are involved. 

This can be particularly helpful for post-incident assessments. And since you can also make custom fields mandatory when an incident is declared or resolved, it will ensure all the relevant data is captured before it’s lost in the shuffle.

New incident label capabilities 

Labels provide a structured way to categorize, route, and manage your integrations and alert groups in Grafana Cloud IRM. By applying labels, you can optimize response workflows, improve alert routing, and gain better visibility into service relationships. 

Previously, labels in OnCall and Incident didn’t necessarily use the same labels, but this new update brings the two together and creates a better UI to manage label settings across your plugins. 

To enable any of the features we just discussed, simply go to IRM > Settings > Incident and navigate to the appropriate field to add or update the customization. Check out our docs to learn more.

Declare a private incident

If you find a vulnerability in your software, the last thing you need is someone spotting it in a company Slack thread and trying to exploit it before it’s fixed. In these types of situations, you need to lock down the incident to a small group of stakeholders in your organization. 

To manage this in Grafana Cloud IRM, you can now declare a private incident, limiting who has access to the information from the very beginning. To do so, select “Private” from the Incident access options and the app will create a new private channel in Slack to declare the incident and pull people based on a need-to-know basis. From there, you can add people as needed, giving you tighter control over who can monitor the status of the incident.

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