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Add and manage incident participants

During active incidents, you need the right people involved at the right time. Grafana IRM’s participant management features allow you to quickly bring in teammates to help investigate and resolve incidents.

This topic explains how to add participants to incidents, manage invitations, and track participation status.

Before you begin

To add and manage participants in Grafana IRM, you need:

  • Access to an active incident (or drill incident in Grafana IRM
  • Appropriate permissions to modify incident details
  • For team invitations: properly configured teams in Grafana Cloud

About incident participation

When you add participants to an incident, Grafana IRM:

  • Sends notifications to the invited users through their configured notification rules
  • Tracks their response status (invited, acknowledged, accepted, or declined)
  • Allows participants to contribute to incident resolution

All invitations are delivered using the OnCall Direct Paging integration, which creates an alert group associated with the incident. This integration uses:

Add participants to an incident

You can invite both individuals and teams to participate in an incident. Invitations trigger notifications through configured channels such as email, Slack, SMS, or phone.

Invite individual users

To invite specific users to an incident:

  1. Navigate to the incident details page.
  2. Locate the Participants section in the right sidebar.
  3. Click + Invite.
  4. In the invitation dialog, switch to the Users tab if not already selected.
  5. Search for and select the users you want to invite.
  6. In the confirmation window, select the notification priority:
    • Default: Uses the user’s standard notification settings
    • Important: Uses the user’s high-priority notification settings
  7. Click Confirm to send the invitations.

Tip

Use the Important priority option when you need an immediate response from the invited participants.

Invite teams

To invite an entire team to an incident:

  1. Navigate to the incident details page.
  2. Locate the Participants section in the right sidebar.
  3. Click + Invite.
  4. In the invitation dialog, switch to the Teams tab.
  5. Search for and select the teams you want to invite.
  6. In the confirmation window, select the notification priority.
  7. Click Confirm to send the invitations.

Note

When you invite a team, the notification goes to the currently on-call team member(s) as defined in the team’s on-call schedule.

Respond to an invitation

When you receive an incident invitation, you can respond in several ways depending on your availability and role.

Response options

When you receive an invitation notification (via email, Slack, SMS, or phone call), you can:

  1. Accept: Join the incident and actively participate in the resolution
  2. Decline: Indicate you’re unable to participate
  3. Dismiss: Acknowledge the notification without committing to participate

Your response affects the associated alert group:

  • Accepting/Declining: Resolves the associated alert group and stops any escalation chains
  • Dismissing: Leaves the alert group active, allowing potential escalation to continue

Change your response later

If you initially dismissed an invitation or need to change your response:

  1. Navigate to the incident page.
  2. Find your name in the Participants section.
  3. Click the appropriate action icon:
    • ✔️ (Checkmark): Accept the invitation
    • 🗑️ (Trash): Decline the invitation

Manage participants

The incident owner and users with appropriate permissions can manage participants throughout the incident lifecycle.

Monitor participant status

The Participants section displays each invited participant’s current status:

IconStatusDescription
🔔InvitedUser has been invited but hasn’t responded
👁️AcknowledgedUser has seen the invitation but hasn’t formally accepted
✔️AcceptedUser has accepted the invitation and is actively participating
❌DeclinedUser has declined the invitation

Remove participants

To remove a participant from an incident:

  1. Navigate to the incident details page.
  2. In the Participants section, find the participant you want to remove.
  3. Click the 🗑️ (Trash) icon next to their name.
  4. Confirm the removal when prompted.

Note

Removing a participant stops any ongoing notifications to that user and resolves the associated alert group.

View notification details

To see the notification history for a participant:

  1. Navigate to the incident details page.
  2. In the Participants section, find the participant.
  3. Click on their profile icon or name.
  4. In the popup menu, select View notification details.

This shows the alert group associated with the invitation, including notification delivery attempts and status.

Troubleshoot participant invitations

If you encounter issues with participant invitations, check these common causes:

Team not appearing in the invitation list

If you don’t see a team in the invitation dialog:

  1. Verify the team is properly registered in Grafana Cloud teams.
  2. Ensure the team has a Direct Paging integration with configured notification channels.
  3. Check that you have permission to view and modify the team.

User not receiving invitations

If a user reports not receiving invitations:

  1. Verify their notification rules are properly configured in their Grafana Cloud IRM profile.
  2. Check that they have the correct contact information (email, phone number) in their profile.
  3. Confirm they are a member of your Grafana Cloud organization with appropriate permissions.