Major Incident workbench — the Post Incident Report tab

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Major Incident Workbench — The Post Incident Report Tab

    The Post Incident Report tab is essential for understanding the causes of major incidents and the actions taken by teams for resolution. It allows teams to assess their response and determine necessary follow-up actions. This report records all relevant actions, reasons, and findings related to the incident.

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    Key Features

    • Overview: Summarizes the incident.
    • Findings: Details the causes of the incident and lessons learned.
    • Resolution: Outlines the steps taken to resolve the issue.
    • Timeline: Captures all activity feeds related to the incident, including communication tasks. The timeline can be updated with the latest activities.
    • Editing Capabilities: Major incident managers can edit reports when the incident is in the Resolved state and manage related Problem or Change information.
    • Related Improvement Records: If the Continual Improvement Management (CIM) plugin is active, this section shows Inbound CIM Integrations records.
    • Report Compilation: Users can compile and download a complete report in PDF format.

    Key Outcomes

    By effectively utilizing the Post Incident Report tab, ServiceNow customers can ensure comprehensive documentation of major incidents, fostering improved incident response and resolution strategies. The report enhances transparency and accountability for incident management processes, ultimately supporting ongoing improvements within the organization.

    The Post Incident Report tab helps you to understand the cause of the major incident, and the actions taken by the teams to resolve the incident.

    The teams can assess the incident response and resolution process and determine follow-up action items. The post incident report is required to record the actions performed, the reasons for doing them, and findings.
    Note:
    The major incident manager can edit a report when the incident is in the Resolved state.
    Figure 1. View of the Post Incident Report tab
    Post incident report tab
    The post incident report includes the following sections where a major incident manager can provide required information:
    • Overview: Summary of the incident.
    • Findings: Information on what caused the major incident and any lessons learned in the process.
    • Resolution: Information on the resolution steps taken to resolve the issue. The major incident manager can also add or edit any related Problem or Change information by clicking Add or Manage respectively.
    • Timeline: Information of all the activity feeds, not only of the incident but also of the incident communication plan and incident communication tasks related to the incident. You can update the timeline with the latest activity by clicking Regenerate Timeline.
      Note:
      The information that you provide for Overview, Findings, and Timeline gets updated in the Post Incident Report section on the Incident form.

    If you activate the Continual Improvement Management (CIM) plugin (com.sn_cim), the Related Improvement Records section is displayed in the report. This section displays the Inbound CIM Integrations records.

    When you click View Complete Report, all the information entered by the major incident manager is compiled together and you can download the report in the .PDF format by clicking Download Report PDF.

    The following links appear in the Incident form under the Related Links section:
    • Regenerate PIR Timeline: This link appears when incident is in the Resolved state and the user has the major_incident_manager role.
    • Preview PIR: This link appears when incident is in the Resolved or Closed state and the user has the itil role.
    Note:
    On the downloaded report, under Incident Response Timeline, the time displayed in the timing type Time to Identify is calculated in the following ways:
    • If you propose the incident as a major incident: The time indicates the time from creation of the first related alert for this incident or creation of the incident (in case there is no alert or the Event Management plugin is inactive), whichever occurs first, until the time the incident is first proposed as a major incident.
    • If you create a major incident directly: The time indicates the time from creation of the first related alert for this incident or creation of the incident (in case there is no alert or the Event Management plugin is inactive), whichever occurs first, until the time the incident is promoted as a major incident.