Severity and Priority

Every incident carries two separate fields: Severity and Priority. They look similar but do very different jobs — severity decides who gets paged, priority is purely informational.

Severity drives escalation

Severity has five fixed levels, Sev-1 through Sev-5. You set it when the incident is created, and it's what a service's escalation policy is mapped against — each severity level maps to a policy, or to Do Not Escalate, on the service itself. See Create a Service for how that mapping works.

For example, a Red Flag — Pit Wall API Unresponsive incident created at Sev-1 escalates through whichever policy that service has mapped to Sev-1 — commonly the team's most urgent escalation path.

Priority is informational only

Priority also has five fixed levels, P1 through P5 — but it isn't set when an incident is created, only afterward, and it has no effect on escalation, routing, or notifications. It exists purely to help you sort and filter your incident list.

Severity decides who's paged; priority never does

Changing an incident's priority never changes who gets notified or when. Only severity does that.

Changing severity or priority on an existing incident

Both can be changed after creation by someone with permission to act on that incident. See Changing Severity and Changing Priority for the steps.

FAQ

Can I add a sixth severity or priority level, or rename the existing ones?

No. Both are fixed at five levels (Sev-1–Sev-5, P1–P5) today, with no way to add, remove, or rename a level.

If I lower an incident's priority, does it get escalated less urgently?

No. Priority has no effect on escalation. Only the incident's severity — and the policy it's mapped to on the service — controls that.

Who can change an incident's severity or priority?

Anyone with permission to act on that specific incident. The option is hidden if you don't have it.