Incident
An Incident is an unplanned interruption or reduction in quality of an IT service, tracked on the incident table so service can be restored as fast as possible.
Also searched as: incident management, incident record, ServiceNow incident.
In practice
The incident table extends task, so it inherits assignment, state, work notes and SLA behaviour. Priority is not typed in by hand — it is derived from Impact x Urgency through the priority lookup rules. Restoring service is the goal; finding the root cause belongs to Problem.
Example
A user cannot reach the VPN. Service desk raises INC0012345 on the incident table, sets Impact 2 / Urgency 2 (Priority 3 - Moderate), assigns it to Network Support, and resolves it once the tunnel is back.
What interviewers check
Panels check whether you keep Incident, Problem and Change separate, and whether you know priority is calculated rather than entered.
Practise this topic
Related ITSM terms
- ProblemA Problem is the record that tracks the underlying cause of one or more incidents, so the fault can be removed permanently instead of repeatedly worked around.
- Change RequestA Change Request is a controlled record for adding, modifying or removing anything that could affect a live IT service, carrying risk assessment, approvals and an implementation window.
- SLA (Service Level Agreement)An SLA is a committed target — such as resolve a P1 within four hours — enforced in ServiceNow by an SLA Definition that attaches a timer to a task and tracks elapsed, remaining and breached time.