Incident Priority Statuses

Our support system categorizes problems and incidents as one of four statuses: low, normal, high, and urgent. 

Urgent

• A large number of users are affected
• Users are affected in a way that prevents them from performing their regular job functions
• Immediate response time required, implications of leaving issue unaddressed are severe
• Examples: 
  Internet outage, server down, ransomware attack, critical service outage

High

• A moderate number of users are affected, OR a single user's technological ecosystem is completely incapacitated 
• Users are still able to work, although they need to employ a difficult workaround or are very inconvenienced
• Expedited response time required, implications of leaving issue unaddressed are considerable
• Examples:
  Critical service disruption, website disruption, mail delivery issues

Normal

• An issue prevents a single user from working efficiently, OR a user management request is being actioned
• Users are still able to work, although they need to employ a workaround or are inconvenienced
• Quick response time required, implications of leaving issue unaddressed are moderate
• Examples:
  User management requests, singular service not functioning properly, hardware issues

Low

• If a request does not fit into the above categories, it is considered low priority
• Users are still able to work, although they have a question, request, or their issue does not significantly impact their workflow
• Low priority tickets are still addressed in a timely manner
• Examples:
  Equipment staging, how-to questions, data entry, administrative tasks

In addition to the above, we measure every situation as a unique event, with its own implications. As such, we balance both urgency and business impact to triage appropriately. Please see the following image as a reference:

Source: Smith, Matt. “Impact Urgency Matrix Defined!” Concurrency. Accessed August 8, 2022. https://www.concurrency.com/blog/june-2019/impact-urgency-matrix-defined!