Automate incident management in Jira Service Management

Automation helps teams respond to incidents faster and more consistently by reducing manual effort and ensuring the right people, tools, and information are available at the right time. In Jira Service Management, you can automate key parts of the incident lifecycle using Jira Automation.

Why automate your incident response?

Manually managing incidents can lead to delays, inconsistencies, and gaps in communication. Automation helps you:

• Speed up response times by instantly notifying responders or adding them to collaboration channels.

• Standardize your processes across incidents, ensuring no critical step is missed.

• Reduce context switching for incident managers and responders by integrating with tools like Slack.

Automation is especially valuable during high-severity incidents, when teams need to move quickly and avoid mistakes.

How automation works with incidents

Jira Automation lets you define rules that respond to changes in your incident work items. You can:

• Trigger rules based on events, such as when an incident is created or escalated.

• Add conditions to tailor your response based on priority, impacted services, or teams involved.

• Use incident-specific actions to manage communication and coordination, and documentation.

All automation rules run securely within your site, and actions support smart values so you can tailor messages and behavior dynamically.

Actions available for incident automation

We’ve introduced several new actions that work specifically for incident issues in Jira Service Management. These are designed to help you automate key parts of your incident workflow. You can use them individually or combine them in a single rule.

Current actions:

• Add apps to Slack channel

• Add bookmarks to Slack channel

• Add members to Slack channel

• Send direct message on Slack (works for alerts too)

• Send message on Slack channel (works for alerts too)

• Create incident

• Create Microsoft Team chat or meeting for incident

• Create Slack channel for incident

• Create Zoom meeting for incident

Best practices for building incident automation rules

To get the most out of automation in incident management:

• Keep your rules modular: One rule per phase of the incident lifecycle makes it easier to manage and debug.

• Use smart values: Tailor messages and actions to the specific context of the incident.

• Test with real scenarios: Use lower-severity incidents before scaling automation to high-impact cases.

• Review audit logs: Understand how automation behaves during live incidents and fine-tune your rules as needed.