# Get started with Incidents

Source: https://instatus.com/help/incident-response/incidents

You can use Instatus to respond to incidents quickly with your team. You can do that from our dashboard, Slack or Microsoft Teams.

![Incidents list](https://instatus.com/help/incidents/list.png)

## Add your first incident

Login to your Instatus at [instatus.com/login](https://dashboard.instatus.com/login) then choose your current project.

Go to **Incidents** and click the **Add incident** button.

![Add a new incident](https://instatus.com/help/incidents/add-incident.png)

- Checkmark to select if the incident started in the past.
- Status: Could be `Investigating`, `Identified`, `Monitoring` or `Resolved`.
- The title of the incident.
- A detailed description of the incident.
- Components that are affected by the incident.
- Checkmark to publish the incident to your status page.

Click **Add incident**, and your incident will be created.

Congrats, you just added your first incident. 🏄‍♂️

## Add an incident update

You can click the **Add an update** button to add an update.

![Add a new incident update](https://instatus.com/help/incidents/add-incident-update.png)

You can add a new update to the incident. You can update the status, description, affected components, date and optionally notify users about the update.

Finally, click on **Add update** to add your update.

Update is now added 🏄‍♀️

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## Add a postmortem

When your incident is resolved, you can add a postmortem to your incident. A postmortem is a final review to document lessons learned, identify root causes, and implement long-term fixes.

To add one, open the resolved incident and click **Add postmortem**. Then:

- Write your postmortem in markdown. Code blocks are supported, so you can include logs or configuration snippets.
- Pick a date for the postmortem. It must be after the incident's last update.
- Choose whether to notify subscribers about the postmortem. You can also fine-tune exactly who gets notified.

The postmortem appears on your status page as the final entry in the incident's timeline.

If you use [Instatus for Slack](https://instatus.com/help/incident-response/slack), you can also add a postmortem by running `/incident postmortem` in the incident channel.

- [Schedule maintenance periods](https://instatus.com/help/incident-response/maintenance): Learn how to add and update maintenances.