What is incident management in ITIL?

Disrupted IT services can have a ripple effect throughout your systems and severely impact overall IT function and security, so it’s crucial to resolve any problems ASAP—and that means leveling up your incident management. Incidents are unplanned interruptions to IT services that reduce service quality, while incident management is the process of managing and resolving these incidents. Incident management generally involves prioritizing and fixing incidents based on urgency and impact. When done correctly, incident management can minimize the effect of interruptions and return your service to normal as fast as possible, helping avoid an accidental breach of your service level agreements (SLAs) . With the help of a centralized incident management tool that follows Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) incident management protocol, ensuring function and security will be simple. Not only will an ITIL incident management platform serve as an incident tracker and incident report software, but it can also offer analysis and reporting capabilities that make resolving issues easier. Plus, employees will know how to get the help they need, and IT technicians will receive incidents in a more organized way and be able to diagnose and manage problems even faster.

Why is incident management important?

Incident management helps to ensure your business has the IT support it needs to function efficiently. Even with preventative measures like data log security monitors and firewalls in place, various system issues like memory, capacity, or sophisticated cyber threats might slip under your radar. When an employee experiences a problem, you must deploy a tool to respond. That’s where incident management comes in. ITIL incident management is useful and can even be critical. It’s all too possible for an incident to escalate to a much more severe problem affecting security or functionality. Another important function of ITIL incident management tool is its ability to maintain a foundation of trust in your business. When system errors prevent network functionality, your employees will be uneasy about the privacy and quality of their work environment. Even worse, customers who cannot voice incident complaints are unlikely to trust your business. Trust in your business' safety and reliability can depend on your ability to receive and fix incident tickets in a timely fashion.

What is an incident management solution, and what does the incident lifecycle look like?

Incident management platform - what is it? An incident management system is a tool designed to help speed up and automate the incident management process. Your incident tracker can process tickets, escalate tickets to problems when necessary, and provide recommended solutions to IT managers. When your network users encounter an issue, you need an efficient channel to connect users with real, human IT managers in an organized way that won’t overwhelm managers of even the largest networks—and that’s exactly what incident reporting software does. Incident tracking software helps consolidate the ticket-to-problem process so IT managers aren’t flooded with individual, ad hoc questions in their inboxes. Essentially, it streamlines and helps automate the entire incident management process. Incident lifecycle Your incident management process should begin with the identification stage, which means implementing a ticketing process. The good news is that ITIL frameworks include a ticketing protocol, enabling users to document details of an incident and submit everything through a centralized system. Service Desk can create tickets from information submitted via email or the user portal, direct contact with IT professionals, and Orion modules imports. After your IT incident management team receives the ticket, it’s time to diagnose and resolve the issue’s root cause. Here, too, your incident management software will come in handy, as it can provide repair and optimization recommendations. Then, your IT incident management team can close the ticket and inform the relevant end-users.

How does Service Desk incident management software work?

SolarWinds Service Desk offers comprehensive incident management using the ITIL framework. Service Desk is a scalable solution that can support service management for large and small organizations. To maximize the efficiency of the incident management process, Service Desk includes a unique employee service portal , which informs employees of common issues that might be mistaken for a more serious incident. If an employee is experiencing a problem that can be easily self-corrected, there’s no need to flood the ITIL incident management system with superfluous requests. Instead, they can refer to FAQs within the knowledge base . As more incidents are processed through Service Desk, SolarWinds AI tools can constantly develop your existing knowledge into more accurate and sophisticated solutions. The longer you use Service Desk, the more precise the incident response solutions will become. For IT managers, SolarWinds also employs an intuitive visual interface with customizable displays. Service Desk makes it easy to visualize the entire incident management process from beginning to end.

What are incident management best practices?

When it comes to incident management, there are a few best practices you’ll want to follow to save time and make your life as easy as possible. First, you’ll want to automate the incident creation process. After all, manually entering data to create incidents can be a tedious and time-consuming task that leaves plenty of room for errors. However, you can save yourself the headache by automating the incident creation process. In a similar vein, you can configure your ITIL incident management system to automatically route tickets in the queue to the right group or agents to save time. Automatically updating ticket states and closing inactive tickets can also be a major time-saving move. Try to create an environment where users submit service requests rather than break-fix incident tickets, as service requests are less disruptive and generally easier to automate than incidents. They can also be approved in advance, requiring less hands-on work upon ticket submission than incidents, which are usually quite urgent and require resolution ASAP. We also recommend creating relationships between relevant areas of your incident reporting software. Connecting incidents with similar issues, useful Knowledge Base articles, and solutions that were helpful in the past won’t take much time, but it can greatly improve the end-user experience. It’s also worth connecting laptop incidents to their assets, as this can create a record you can use to justify a replacement down the line.

What is the difference between Incident Management and Problem Management?

Incident management and problem management are two key processes in IT service management, but they serve slightly different purposes. Incident management focuses on immediate response and resolving individual incidents or disruptions. Its main goal is to restore normal service operations as quickly as possible, minimizing the impact on users and the business. Incident management is reactive in nature, dealing with incidents as they occur and prioritizing their timely resolution. Problem management , on the other hand, takes a proactive approach, identifying and addressing the root causes of incidents. Its goal is to prevent the recurrence of incidents and improve the overall quality of IT services. Problem management involves analyzing patterns, trends, and repeating incidents to identify root causes and implement long-term solutions. It focuses on understanding why incidents happen and finding ways to eliminate or mitigate the underlying problems. While incident management is concerned with immediate response and restoration of services, problem management focuses on identifying and resolving root causes to prevent similar incidents in the future. Incident management deals with individual incidents, while problem management takes a broader perspective to address systemic issues. Both incident management and problem management are critical to maintaining stable and reliable IT services. Incident management ensures rapid resolution of incidents and minimizes service disruption, while problem management contributes to continuous improvement and prevention of recurring incidents.

What is incident routing, and why is it helpful?

Incident routing is the process of addressing incidents to the appropriate teams or individuals within an organization for effective and efficient resolution. It involves determining the best resources and expertise required to handle specific incidents based on their characteristics. Incident routing is typically done through incident management software or ticketing systems. Why is incident routing helpful? Efficient and timely incident resolution : By addressing incidents to the appropriate teams or individuals with the necessary skills and knowledge, incident routing ensures that incidents are resolved quickly and efficiently. This reduces the time and effort required to reach the appropriate resources, resulting in faster incident resolution and minimized downtime. Resource allocation : Incident routing helps in optimizing resource allocation within an organization. Assigning critical incidents to the appropriate teams or individuals helps ensure that the workload is distributed evenly, preventing bottlenecks and overburdening specific support staff. Specialized support : Different types of incidents may require specialized expertise to effectively resolve them. Incident routing allows incidents to be routed to support teams or individuals who have the required skills and experience. This process helps ensure that incidents are handled by experts in the relevant areas, leading to more accurate and effective solutions. Prioritization and SLA compliance : Incident routing helps prioritize incidents based on their urgency, impact, and compliance with service level agreements (SLAs). Automatic routing of incidents according to predefined criteria, such as priority levels or SLA requirements, ensures that high-priority incidents receive immediate attention. This helps achieve SLA targets and quickly resolve critical issues. Accountability and tracking : Incident routing provides a clear path of responsibility and accountability. Each incident is assigned to a specific team or individual, ensuring ownership and enabling effective tracking of incident progress. This increases transparency, collaboration, and coordination among support staff. Reporting and analysis : Incident routing systems often provide comprehensive reporting and analysis capabilities. They collect in-depth metrics and incident data on the number of incidents, response times, resolution rates, and other key indicators. This information helps organizations analyze incident patterns, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to continuously improve incident management processes. You can find detailed instructions on how to create an incident and how to configure its routing in our documentation.

Incident management software for faster IT response

Capture, prioritize, route, and resolve IT incidents in one connected service desk.

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Manage IT incidents

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Automate incident workflows

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Manage IT incidents from report to resolution

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SolarWinds Service Desk is IT incident management software that helps IT teams track, prioritize, incident response, and resolve IT incidents through a connected IT service management (ITSM) platform. Teams can capture incident tickets from employees, categorize issues by service or type, set priority based on impact and urgency, route work to the appropriate team, and track each record through the incident lifecycle.

Connect incident records with knowledge base articles, assets, configuration items (CIs), problem records, and change records to provide relevant context during investigation and resolution. Workflow automation can apply defined routing and escalation rules, send notifications, update records, and create related work. Teams can also use incident reporting to review ticket trends, SLA performance, recurring issues, and Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR).

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Route and prioritize IT incidents with the right context

Capture IT incidents through the service desk or help desk and use categorization, priority, assignment, SLA targets, and workflow rules to direct work to the appropriate team. Priority can reflect the incident’s impact and urgency, helping IT teams focus on service interruptions that affect critical systems or larger groups of employees.

Associate incident tickets with relevant assets, configuration items, affected services, knowledge articles, and previous records. That context helps agents investigate issues, identify related incidents, communicate updates, and document work performed throughout the incident lifecycle. SolarWinds Service Desk supports ticket creation, routing, lifecycle tracking, and incident-management workflows within an ITSM incident management platform.

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Support self-service with knowledge

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Help employees find relevant information before they submit a support ticket. SolarWinds Service Desk connects the knowledge base with ticket forms and Virtual Agent experiences, while Smart Suggestions can recommend potentially relevant knowledge base articles and service catalog items as users search or enter a request.

Agents can also access knowledge articles while working on incidents and create solutions from active tickets when appropriate. Self-service can help employees resolve common issues independently, reduce avoidable ticket volume, and provide agents with more complete context when a ticket still requires assistance.

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Automate incident workflows

Plan, execute, and communicate changes seamlessly

Use workflow automation for repeatable incident-management actions based on defined conditions. Automation rules can help teams categorize and prioritize incoming tickets, assign incidents to the appropriate queue or agent, route work by service or request type, notify affected users, update ticket fields, and trigger escalations.

Teams can also configure lifecycle-related actions, such as moving an inactive incident from Resolved to Closed after a defined period without updates. Automation should support clear operational rules while leaving complex diagnosis, communication, and approval decisions with the appropriate IT personnel.

Service Desk automation rules can trigger actions and escalation points based on incoming ticket data or comments, and its settings include a configurable inactivity period for moving resolved incidents to closed.

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Connect incidents, problems, and changes

Repeated, related, or high-impact incidents can be associated with problem records for further investigation. Incident management focuses on restoring normal service, while problem management investigates underlying causes, maintains known errors and workarounds, and may use root cause analysis to help prevent recurrence.

Teams can also link incident tickets to planned, approved, or completed change records. These relationships give agents a clearer view of related work and potential service impact, while preserving the incident, asset, and configuration-item context needed for investigation and reporting.

Connecting incidents, problems, and changes supports a more complete ITSM workflow. IT support, operations, and DevOps teams can work from shared incident records to restore service, investigate recurring issues, and document controlled remediation through change management.

After a significant or recurring incident, teams can conduct a post-incident review, sometimes called a postmortem, to review the incident timeline, business impact, response actions, and lessons learned. If the review identifies an underlying cause, the team can associate the incident with a problem record, document a workaround or known error, and track corrective work through the appropriate change process.

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Support ITIL-aligned incident management

ITIL provides guidance for managing incidents as part of a broader IT service management practice. An ITIL-aligned incident workflow commonly includes recording, categorizing, prioritizing, assigning, investigating, communicating, resolving, confirming service restoration, and closing incident tickets.

SolarWinds Service Desk helps teams configure incident workflows, connect tickets with knowledge articles and impacted assets, associate recurring incidents with problem records, and link related changes. Dashboards and reports can help teams review incident volume, ticket priorities, SLA performance, recurring patterns, and MTTR to identify process-improvement opportunities.

Teams can adapt incident-management workflows, categories, service targets, escalation paths, and reporting to their own service model and operational requirements. Service Desk dashboards provide configurable visibility into incidents, SLAs, and ITSM performance.

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Get More on Incident Management Software

Do you find yourself asking…

What is incident management in ITIL?
Why is incident management important?
What is an incident management solution and what does the incident lifecycle look like?
How does Service Desk incident management software work?
What is incident routing and why is it helpful?
What are incident management best practices?
What is the difference between Incident Management and Problem Management?

In ITIL, an incident is an unplanned interruption to an IT service or a reduction in its quality. Incident management is the practice of restoring normal service operation as quickly as practical while minimizing the effect on business operations.

An incident management workflow typically includes logging the incident, categorizing it, setting priority based on impact and urgency, assigning it to the appropriate team, investigating and communicating progress, resolving the issue, confirming restoration, and closing the record. Service level agreements (SLAs) can help teams define response and resolution targets for incidents.

A centralized incident management system helps IT teams manage this work through structured tickets, routing and escalation rules, status tracking, notifications, and reporting. It can also connect incidents with relevant assets, configuration items, knowledge base articles, problem records, and change records to provide more context during investigation and resolution.

SolarWinds Service Desk supports ITIL-aligned incident management by helping teams configure incident workflows, track the incident lifecycle, automate defined actions, and connect incident records with related ITSM information. For recurring or underlying issues, teams can associate incidents with problem management records. For service-target planning, see service level management.

An incident management solution is an IT service management (ITSM) platform that helps teams record, prioritize, assign, track, and resolve unplanned service interruptions or reductions in service quality. It gives employees a central way to report issues and helps IT teams coordinate the work required to restore normal service.

Rather than managing requests through inboxes, chat messages, or ad hoc conversations, teams can use incident tickets to capture relevant details, set priority based on impact and urgency, assign ownership, communicate updates, and document resolution activity. Depending on the organization’s workflow, an incident management solution can also connect tickets to knowledge base articles, assets and configuration items, service level agreements (SLAs), change records, and problem records.

Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR) is a common metric for evaluating incident-management performance. It measures the average time required to resolve incidents and restore service. Teams can use MTTR alongside ticket volume, priority, incident category, SLA performance, and recurring-incident trends to identify where triage, routing, knowledge content, automation, or collaboration may need improvement.

Incident lifecycle

An incident lifecycle commonly includes the following stages:

Identify and log the incident. An employee, monitoring tool, or IT team member identifies an issue. The incident is recorded as a ticket through a service portal, email, an integration, or another configured intake channel.
Categorize and prioritize. The team classifies the incident and sets its priority according to business impact and urgency. This helps determine the appropriate response target, escalation path, and assignment.
Assign and investigate. The ticket is routed to the appropriate team or agent. The assigned team reviews the incident details, affected service, asset, or configuration item, and relevant knowledge articles to determine how to restore service.
Resolve or escalate. The team applies a workaround or resolution to restore normal service. When an incident is recurring, widespread, or points to an underlying issue, the team can associate it with a problem record for further investigation. If remediation requires a controlled change to the environment, the incident can be linked to a change record.
Perform root cause analysis when appropriate. Root cause analysis (RCA) is typically part of problem management rather than the immediate incident-resolution process. Teams use RCA to identify the underlying reason one or more incidents occurred, document a workaround or known error when needed, and pursue a permanent corrective action intended to reduce recurrence. Common RCA approaches include the Five Whys and fault-tree.
Confirm and close. The team confirms that service has been restored, documents the resolution and relevant notes, informs affected users, and closes the incident according to the organization’s process.
Review and improve. Teams can review incident history, MTTR, recurring issues, SLA performance, and resolution patterns to improve workflows, knowledge articles, automation rules, and service reliability.

SolarWinds Service Desk supports incident ticket creation, routing, lifecycle tracking, automation rules, knowledge base integration, asset and CMDB context, and links to problem and change records. Those connections can help teams restore service during an incident while retaining the information needed to investigate recurring issues and improve MTTR over time.

Incident routing is the process of addressing incidents to the appropriate teams or individuals within an organization for effective and efficient resolution. It involves determining the best resources and expertise required to handle specific incidents based on their characteristics. Incident routing is typically done through incident management software or ticketing systems.

Why is incident routing helpful?

Efficient and timely incident resolution: By addressing incidents to the appropriate teams or individuals with the necessary skills and knowledge, incident routing ensures that incidents are resolved quickly and efficiently. This reduces the time and effort required to reach the appropriate resources, resulting in faster incident resolution and minimized downtime.
Resource allocation: Incident routing helps in optimizing resource allocation within an organization. Assigning critical incidents to the appropriate teams or individuals helps distribute the workload evenly, preventing bottlenecks and overburdening specific support staff.
Specialized support: Different types of incidents may require specialized expertise to effectively resolve them. Incident routing allows incidents to be routed to support teams or individuals who have the required skills and experience. This process helps ensure that incidents are handled by experts in the relevant areas, leading to more accurate and effective solutions.
Prioritization and SLA compliance: Incident routing helps prioritize incidents based on their urgency, impact, and compliance with service level agreements (SLAs). Automatic routing of incidents based on predefined criteria, such as priority levels or SLA requirements, ensures high-priority incidents receive immediate attention. This helps meet SLA targets and resolve critical issues quickly.
Accountability and tracking: Incident routing provides a clear path of responsibility and accountability. Each incident is assigned to a specific team or individual, ensuring ownership and enabling effective tracking of incident progress. This increases transparency, collaboration, and coordination among support staff.
Reporting and analysis: Incident routing systems often provide comprehensive reporting and analysis capabilities. They collect in-depth metrics and incident data on incident volume, response times, resolution rates, and other key indicators. This information helps organizations analyze incident patterns, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to continuously improve incident management processes.

You can find detailed instructions on how to create an incident and how to configure its routing in our documentation.

Effective incident management depends on a clear, repeatable process for restoring service, communicating with affected users, and learning from recurring issues. The following practices can help IT teams manage incident work consistently while maintaining visibility into performance.

Define what qualifies as an incident.
Use incidents for unplanned service interruptions or reductions in service quality. Use service requests for standard, user-initiated needs such as access, equipment, or approved software. Clear guidance helps employees select the right request type and helps IT teams apply the appropriate workflow. SolarWinds recommends encouraging service requests where appropriate rather than using break-fix incident tickets for every need.
Provide a central, accessible intake channel.
Give employees a consistent way to report issues through a service portal, email, integrations, or other approved channels. Collect the information agents need to begin work, such as the affected service, device, location, business impact, and a description of the issue. Service Desk can create incident or service-request tickets automatically from email and portal submissions.
Categorize and prioritize tickets consistently.
Use categories that are broad enough to remain manageable but specific enough to support accurate routing and reporting. Set priority based on impact and urgency so the team can focus first on incidents affecting critical services or larger groups of users.
Automate repeatable workflow actions.
Use automation rules for defined, low-risk tasks such as categorizing, prioritizing, assigning, routing, escalating, updating fields, and sending notifications. Configure the rules around business logic and review them regularly, rather than automating every decision. Service Desk automation can apply custom rules to inbound tickets, change requests, and releases.
Use SLAs and escalation paths.
Establish response and resolution targets that reflect the priority and business impact of an incident. Define when and how tickets should be escalated to another team, manager, or on-call resource, and communicate updates to affected users throughout the lifecycle.
Connect incidents to relevant context.
Link incidents to related services, assets, configuration items, knowledge base articles, prior incidents, problem records, and change records when applicable. This context can help agents investigate more efficiently, identify patterns, and maintain a useful history of work performed. Asset and CMDB information can also help teams understand which technology and services may be affected.
Use knowledge to support self-service and faster resolution.
Create and maintain knowledge articles for common issues, approved workarounds, and repeatable resolutions. Surface relevant content in the service portal and within the incident workflow so employees may resolve routine issues independently and agents can reuse validated guidance.
Close tickets with intention.
Confirm that service has been restored, document the resolution, and ensure the requester has an opportunity to respond before closing the ticket. Time-based automation can move inactive incidents from a resolved state to closed after a configured period without updates.
Measure performance and investigate recurrence.
Review MTTR, ticket volume, SLA performance, reopen rates, priority distribution, and recurring incident patterns. When incidents point to an underlying cause, associate them with a problem record so the team can conduct root cause analysis and pursue a longer-term corrective action.

Incident management works best when teams standardize intake, prioritize by impact and urgency, automate repeatable actions, retain asset and knowledge context, and use incident data to improve future response.

In ITIL, an incident is an unplanned interruption to an IT service or a reduction in its quality. Incident management is the practice of restoring normal service operation as quickly as practical while minimizing the effect on business operations.

An incident management workflow typically includes logging the incident, categorizing it, setting priority based on impact and urgency, assigning it to the appropriate team, investigating and communicating progress, resolving the issue, confirming restoration, and closing the record. Service level agreements (SLAs) can help teams define response and resolution targets for incidents.

A centralized incident management system helps IT teams manage this work through structured tickets, routing and escalation rules, status tracking, notifications, and reporting. It can also connect incidents with relevant assets, configuration items, knowledge base articles, problem records, and change records to provide more context during investigation and resolution.

SolarWinds Service Desk supports ITIL-aligned incident management by helping teams configure incident workflows, track the incident lifecycle, automate defined actions, and connect incident records with related ITSM information. For recurring or underlying issues, teams can associate incidents with problem management records. For service-target planning, see service level management.
An incident management solution is an IT service management (ITSM) platform that helps teams record, prioritize, assign, track, and resolve unplanned service interruptions or reductions in service quality. It gives employees a central way to report issues and helps IT teams coordinate the work required to restore normal service.

Rather than managing requests through inboxes, chat messages, or ad hoc conversations, teams can use incident tickets to capture relevant details, set priority based on impact and urgency, assign ownership, communicate updates, and document resolution activity. Depending on the organization’s workflow, an incident management solution can also connect tickets to knowledge base articles, assets and configuration items, service level agreements (SLAs), change records, and problem records.

Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR) is a common metric for evaluating incident-management performance. It measures the average time required to resolve incidents and restore service. Teams can use MTTR alongside ticket volume, priority, incident category, SLA performance, and recurring-incident trends to identify where triage, routing, knowledge content, automation, or collaboration may need improvement.

Incident lifecycle
An incident lifecycle commonly includes the following stages:

Identify and log the incident. An employee, monitoring tool, or IT team member identifies an issue. The incident is recorded as a ticket through a service portal, email, an integration, or another configured intake channel.
Categorize and prioritize. The team classifies the incident and sets its priority according to business impact and urgency. This helps determine the appropriate response target, escalation path, and assignment.
Assign and investigate. The ticket is routed to the appropriate team or agent. The assigned team reviews the incident details, affected service, asset, or configuration item, and relevant knowledge articles to determine how to restore service.
Resolve or escalate. The team applies a workaround or resolution to restore normal service. When an incident is recurring, widespread, or points to an underlying issue, the team can associate it with a problem record for further investigation. If remediation requires a controlled change to the environment, the incident can be linked to a change record.
Perform root cause analysis when appropriate. Root cause analysis (RCA) is typically part of problem management rather than the immediate incident-resolution process. Teams use RCA to identify the underlying reason one or more incidents occurred, document a workaround or known error when needed, and pursue a permanent corrective action intended to reduce recurrence. Common RCA approaches include the Five Whys and fault-tree.
Confirm and close. The team confirms that service has been restored, documents the resolution and relevant notes, informs affected users, and closes the incident according to the organization’s process.
Review and improve. Teams can review incident history, MTTR, recurring issues, SLA performance, and resolution patterns to improve workflows, knowledge articles, automation rules, and service reliability.

SolarWinds Service Desk supports incident ticket creation, routing, lifecycle tracking, automation rules, knowledge base integration, asset and CMDB context, and links to problem and change records. Those connections can help teams restore service during an incident while retaining the information needed to investigate recurring issues and improve MTTR over time.
Incident routing is the process of addressing incidents to the appropriate teams or individuals within an organization for effective and efficient resolution. It involves determining the best resources and expertise required to handle specific incidents based on their characteristics. Incident routing is typically done through incident management software or ticketing systems.

Why is incident routing helpful?

Efficient and timely incident resolution: By addressing incidents to the appropriate teams or individuals with the necessary skills and knowledge, incident routing ensures that incidents are resolved quickly and efficiently. This reduces the time and effort required to reach the appropriate resources, resulting in faster incident resolution and minimized downtime.

Resource allocation: Incident routing helps in optimizing resource allocation within an organization. Assigning critical incidents to the appropriate teams or individuals helps distribute the workload evenly, preventing bottlenecks and overburdening specific support staff.

Specialized support: Different types of incidents may require specialized expertise to effectively resolve them. Incident routing allows incidents to be routed to support teams or individuals who have the required skills and experience. This process helps ensure that incidents are handled by experts in the relevant areas, leading to more accurate and effective solutions.

Prioritization and SLA compliance: Incident routing helps prioritize incidents based on their urgency, impact, and compliance with service level agreements (SLAs). Automatic routing of incidents based on predefined criteria, such as priority levels or SLA requirements, ensures high-priority incidents receive immediate attention. This helps meet SLA targets and resolve critical issues quickly.

Accountability and tracking: Incident routing provides a clear path of responsibility and accountability. Each incident is assigned to a specific team or individual, ensuring ownership and enabling effective tracking of incident progress. This increases transparency, collaboration, and coordination among support staff.

Reporting and analysis: Incident routing systems often provide comprehensive reporting and analysis capabilities. They collect in-depth metrics and incident data on incident volume, response times, resolution rates, and other key indicators. This information helps organizations analyze incident patterns, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to continuously improve incident management processes.

You can find detailed instructions on how to create an incident and how to configure its routing in our documentation.
Effective incident management depends on a clear, repeatable process for restoring service, communicating with affected users, and learning from recurring issues. The following practices can help IT teams manage incident work consistently while maintaining visibility into performance.

Define what qualifies as an incident.
Use incidents for unplanned service interruptions or reductions in service quality. Use service requests for standard, user-initiated needs such as access, equipment, or approved software. Clear guidance helps employees select the right request type and helps IT teams apply the appropriate workflow. SolarWinds recommends encouraging service requests where appropriate rather than using break-fix incident tickets for every need.

Provide a central, accessible intake channel.
Give employees a consistent way to report issues through a service portal, email, integrations, or other approved channels. Collect the information agents need to begin work, such as the affected service, device, location, business impact, and a description of the issue. Service Desk can create incident or service-request tickets automatically from email and portal submissions.

Categorize and prioritize tickets consistently.
Use categories that are broad enough to remain manageable but specific enough to support accurate routing and reporting. Set priority based on impact and urgency so the team can focus first on incidents affecting critical services or larger groups of users.

Automate repeatable workflow actions.
Use automation rules for defined, low-risk tasks such as categorizing, prioritizing, assigning, routing, escalating, updating fields, and sending notifications. Configure the rules around business logic and review them regularly, rather than automating every decision. Service Desk automation can apply custom rules to inbound tickets, change requests, and releases.

Use SLAs and escalation paths.
Establish response and resolution targets that reflect the priority and business impact of an incident. Define when and how tickets should be escalated to another team, manager, or on-call resource, and communicate updates to affected users throughout the lifecycle.

Connect incidents to relevant context.
Link incidents to related services, assets, configuration items, knowledge base articles, prior incidents, problem records, and change records when applicable. This context can help agents investigate more efficiently, identify patterns, and maintain a useful history of work performed. Asset and CMDB information can also help teams understand which technology and services may be affected.

Use knowledge to support self-service and faster resolution.
Create and maintain knowledge articles for common issues, approved workarounds, and repeatable resolutions. Surface relevant content in the service portal and within the incident workflow so employees may resolve routine issues independently and agents can reuse validated guidance.

Close tickets with intention.
Confirm that service has been restored, document the resolution, and ensure the requester has an opportunity to respond before closing the ticket. Time-based automation can move inactive incidents from a resolved state to closed after a configured period without updates.

Measure performance and investigate recurrence.
Review MTTR, ticket volume, SLA performance, reopen rates, priority distribution, and recurring incident patterns. When incidents point to an underlying cause, associate them with a problem record so the team can conduct root cause analysis and pursue a longer-term corrective action.

Incident management works best when teams standardize intake, prioritize by impact and urgency, automate repeatable actions, retain asset and knowledge context, and use incident data to improve future response.

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