TABLE OF CONTENTS


What is a Major Incident?

A major incident is an incident that destabilizes a business. It has the highest impact and highest urgency. While each organization would have their own criteria for defining a major incident, the following conditions (individually or together) are applicable across industries:

  • If the incident impacts a very high number of users (internal or/and external) 

  • If the incident results in outage of core services or disrupts operations

  • If the incident could lead to legal action


What is Major Incident Management?

Major Incident Management is an incident management process with additional functionalities and tools that would help organizations minimize the cost of a major incident.


In Freshservice, the Major Incident Management module is built on a unified platform that brings together IT Service Management and IT Operations Management. With centralized context, inbuilt communication channels, and collaboration tools, Freshservice eliminates tool hopping and enables different teams to swarm in at a moment’s notice and tackle a major incident fast & effectively.


Freshservice Major Incident Management module is designed to address the four main stages of incident management i.e. Identification, Collaboration & Communication, Resolution, & Review. 


  • Identification: Use a separate ticket category – Major Incident – to drive the appropriate response

  • Collaboration & Communication: Collaborate using popular apps such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, & Slack without any tool hopping

  • Resolution: Streamline resolution through automation

  • Review: Build business resilience by reviewing an incident’s timeline and making longer term fixes


Roles in Major Incident Management

Major Incident Management typically involves personnel from across the organization and beyond. Here's a list of personas that you'll come across in Freshservice Major Incident Management:

  1. Agent: A Service Desk or ITOps agent who keeps an eye out for an incident that might qualify to be categorized as a Major Incident
  2. On-Call Agent: The agent on call to address Major Incidents
  3. Stakeholders: Individuals from across the organization who need to be informed but who don't have agent access
  4. Admin: The administrator of your organization's Freshservice instance. This person has the rights to define, allocate, modify, or remove roles within the Freshservice instance.
  5. Subscriber: An individual who has subscribed to your organization's Status Page.


Next: Preparing to work on a major incident