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Key concepts in Splunk Incident Intelligence đź”—

Here are some important concepts you need to know to successfully use Splunk Incident Intelligence:

Concept

Description

Acknowledged

Incident responders select this status to indicate that they are aware of the incident. The status lifecycle for incidents is triggered, then acknowledged, and then resolved. Acknowledging an incident prevents the escalation to the next step in an incident workflow.

Alert

An alert is an event that meets a defined threshold or criteria.

Alert grouping

Use alert grouping to automate incident trigger conditions and group alerts. Alert grouping conditions are set up at the incident-policy level to let you customize the grouping rules for each incident policy.

Alert routing

Alert routing associates alerts with an incident policy. If an alert matches your configured alert routing conditions, it is routed to the incident policy.

Detector

Use a detector to specify the events for which you want to create an alert that is ingested into Incident Intelligence.

Dismissed

An incident status that incident responders can set to indicate that the incident is dismissed. The status lifecycle for incidents is triggered, then acknowledged, and then resolved. Setting an incident status to dismissed prevents the escalation to the next step in an incident workflow. When you dismiss an incident, it is considered invalid and closed; you will no longer be able to make updates to the incident.

Incident Management

The entire configuration process for an incident policy in Incident Intelligence. This is where you create an incident policy and configure alert routing, alert grouping, and incident workflows for incidents associated with an incident policy.

Incident

An unplanned interruption to a service or reduction in the quality of a service that needs to be resolved. Each incident is made up of alerts that are ingested into Incident Intelligence. You can also create incidents manually. Manual incidents don’t have ingested alerts.

Incident action

Any status-changing event taken by a user or the system on an incident. Incident responders can acknowledge, resolve, or dismiss an incident. These actions update the incident status to reflect the most recent action.

Incident alerting

The primary mechanism of Incident Intelligence. It is the process by which alerts and events are ingested at scale and grouped to create incidents. As alerts and events are ingested into Incident Intelligence, they pass through a series of data transformations, such as alert routing and alert grouping.

Incident policy

Incident policies let you organize incidents depending on the impacted component in your environment. Incident policies include alert-routing and alert-grouping rules and an incident workflow.

Incident status

Where an incident is in its lifecycle. The status of an incident changes based on alert grouping conditions, as well as actions from a user. Throughout the lifecycle of an incident, the incident status can go from triggered, to acknowledged, to resolved or dismissed.

Incident workflow

A configurable series of escalation steps that run in response to a triggered incident. Incident workflows determine who is notified of an incident and the time interval for notifications. You can also use incident workflows to manage how incidents are routed, add automation steps, and route to an on-call schedule.

Maintenance

An incident policy status that mutes all associated incidents. Use incident policy maintenance for planned outages.

Mean time to acknowledge (MTTA)

The average time it takes from when an incident is triggered to when the incident is acknowledged.

Mean time to resolve (MTTR)

The average time it takes from when an incident is triggered to when the incident is resolved.

Muted

An incident status that is set when the associated incident policy is put into maintenance.

Notification preference

A user-level preference that specifies how the user wants to be notified of incidents when they are on call. Notification methods include email, mobile push, SMS, and voice.

On-call schedules

An on-call schedule consists of one or more shifts, with members who rotate through a shift. Use an on-call schedule as a step in your incident policies’ incident workflows.

Resolved

An incident status that incident responders set to indicate that the incident is resolved. The status lifecycle for incidents is triggered, then acknowledged, and then resolved. Resolving an incident status prevents the escalation to the next step in an incident workflow.

Incident policy-based routing

Incident Intelligence relies on an incident policy-based routing scheme. Incident policy-based routing automatically organizes and routes incidents depending on the service that it’s impacting. Rather than routing to a combination of teams and policies, the incident policy an incident is associated with determines who is notified of the incident.

Snoozed

An incident status that is set when responders snooze the incident.

Triggered

The initial stage of an incident is triggered. Incidents are triggered based on the alert grouping conditions you configured for the incident policy.