Communicate status updates in Grafana IRM

Status updates in Grafana IRM help communicate important milestones, decisions, and changes during an incident. Unlike general timeline notes, status updates are designed to keep responders and stakeholders informed on progress, impact, or resolution in a consistent format.

When to use status updates

Status updates signal a key event in the incident, especially when communicating with stakeholders outside the response team.

Use status updates to capture key changes in the state of an incident, such as:

A new investigation path or hypothesis
Confirmation of impact or affected systems
Escalation or handoff to another team
Mitigation steps or rollback actions
Final resolution and next steps

You can create status updates manually in the Grafana UI or by using Slack commands, if your Grafana IRM integration for Slack is enabled.

Add a status update in the UI

When declaring a new incident, you are prompted to provide an initial status to inform responders and stakeholders of the current impact and any actions taken so far.

Tip
Use clear, action-oriented language so stakeholders immediately understand the situation. For example, “Mitigation applied, monitoring impact.”

To add a status update to an active incident:

In the Grafana Cloud main menu, select Alerts & IRM > Incidents.
Navigate to the Incidents tab and open an incident.
In the Overview section, locate the Status update.
If no status updates exist, an empty state appears.
Click + Add.
Enter the following information:
- Content – A detailed message about current status, next steps or impact.
- (Optional) Status and Severity – Adjust the incident status if needed to clarify the current state.
Click Save.

The new update appears in the incident’s Activity section.

Note
You cannot add new status updates to incidents that have been resolved.

Add a status update in Slack

If you’ve connected Grafana IRM to your Slack workspace, you can create and view status updates directly from the incident Slack channel.

Ways to add a status update from Slack:

Slash command:

/grafana incident update add <content>

This command creates a new status update and posts it to Slack and the incident timeline in IRM.

📢 (:loudspeaker:) Slack reaction:

React to any message in the incident Slack channel with the 📢 (:loudspeaker:) emoji to automatically add the message as a status update to the incident in IRM.

To learn more about how to interact with your incidents without leaving Slack, refer to the IRM integration for Slack documentation.

View status updates

Incident status updates are listed in the incident’s Activity section. Only users with permission to manage the incident can create or edit status updates for active (unresolved) incidents.

To view the latest status update from Slack: