A practical guide and template for creating ITIL Incident Reports. Learn how to document incidents effectively to ensure quick resolution and minimize business impact, based on industry best practices.
The Critical Role of an ITIL Incident Report
An ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) Incident Report is a formal document used to record the details of an incident – an unplanned interruption to an IT service or a reduction in the quality of an IT service. The primary goal of incident management, and by extension the incident report, is to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible and minimize the adverse impact on business operations. This ensures that the best possible levels of service quality and availability are maintained.
ITIL Incident Report Template
This template provides a structured format for documenting incidents. It is designed to be comprehensive yet adaptable to your organization's specific needs.
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### ITIL Incident Report: Gmail Service Outage (Concise)
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### Incident Details
**Incident ID:** `INC-GMAIL-20250510-001`
**Incident Title:** `Gmail Outage: Unable to Send/Receive Emails`
**Incident Description:** `Approx. 14:30 UTC, users reported inability to send/receive Gmail. Web and mobile access slow or erroring (e.g., "Temporary Error (502)"). Google Workspace Status Dashboard confirmed service disruption at 14:50 UTC.`
**Incident Date & Time:** `2025-05-10 14:30 UTC`
**Reported By:** `IT Helpdesk (from 50+ user tickets & monitoring).`
**Priority:** `Critical`
**Service Affected:** `Email Service (Gmail)`
**Impact:** `High (All users affected; critical business communication impacted).`
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### Resolution Details
**Root Cause Analysis (RCA):** `Google confirmed: Gmail outage due to faulty configuration push affecting their frontend servers.`
**Resolution Description:** `Monitored Google Workspace Status Dashboard. Used Slack/Intranet for user updates. Tested and confirmed service restoration with users after Google announced resolution.`
**Resolved By:** `Google (External Provider)`
**Resolution Date & Time:** `2025-05-10 17:35 UTC`
**Workaround (if applicable):** `Advised users to use Slack, Teams, phone for urgent comms. Save email drafts.`
**Permanent Solution:** `Google implemented corrective actions. Internal review of BCP for SaaS provider reliance.`
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### Follow-up & Closure
**Lessons Learned:**
* `Heavy reliance on Gmail; BCP for SaaS outages needs review.`
* `Proactive monitoring of provider status dashboards is crucial.`
* `Standardize communication cadence for critical incidents.`
**Action Items:**
* `Review BCP for SaaS outages (IT Director, BCP Lead - Due: 2025-06-07).`
* `Develop communication templates for critical incidents (IT Comms - Due: 2025-05-24).`
* `Investigate emergency external comms options (Ops Head, IT Mgr - Due: 2025-06-30).`
**Closure Approved By:** `Eleanor Vance, CIO`
**Closure Date & Time:** `2025-05-11 10:00 UTC`
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Effective incident reporting is crucial for:
- Understanding the incident: Clearly documenting what happened, when, and who was affected.
- Facilitating resolution: Providing all necessary information to technical teams for quick diagnosis and repair.
- Communication: Keeping stakeholders informed about the incident's status and impact.
- Problem Management: Identifying recurring incidents that may indicate underlying problems that need to be addressed by the Problem Management process.
- Continuous Improvement: Learning from incidents to prevent future occurrences and improve service quality and incident response processes.
This template is designed to help organizations capture all necessary information for effective incident tracking, resolution, and review. Modern digital tools, such as those offered by Lumiform, can further streamline this process by moving away from paper checklists, automating report creation, and enabling efficient tracking and assignment of detected issues. Lumiform, for instance, provides a platform for digital inspections and offers a wide range of expert-proofed templates to enhance operational efficiency.