Incident Triage Guide

Quickly diagnose and categorise an IT incident

🧪 Tested by a human Intermediate 👤 It Admin 👤 Support 👤 Operations
Help me triage this IT incident: [DESCRIBE THE ISSUE]. (1) Classify severity (P1-P4) based on user impact, (2) Identify the most likely affected system or service, (3) List 5 diagnostic checks to run immediately, (4) Suggest the probable root cause, (5) Recommend whether to escalate or resolve at this level, (6) Draft a status update for affected users.

Works on

⚡ M365 Copilot ⭐ ChatGPT (Best) 🟠 Claude

Copy & Open in

🟢 ChatGPT 🟠 Claude

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Tips for Best Results

  • Include the error message, affected users count, and when it started
  • Check if recent changes correlate with the incident
  • Always communicate to affected users even if you do not have a fix yet

📎 More Prompts

Blameless Post-Incident Report

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Write a blameless post-incident report for [INCIDENT]. Include: (1) Executive summary (2 sentences), (2) Timeline of events with timestamps, (3) Impact assessment (users, revenue, SLA), (4) Root cause analysis, (5) What went well in the response, (6) What could be improved, (7) Action items with owners and deadlines. Tone: factual, constructive, forward-looking.
⚡ M365 🟢 GPT ⭐ Claude

Diagnostic Decision Tree

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Create a diagnostic decision tree for [ISSUE TYPE — network connectivity / application crash / login failure / slow performance / email delivery]. Structure as: If symptom A → check B → if yes → do C, if no → check D. Include: expected outcomes at each step, escalation triggers, and resolution confirmations. Write for a Level 1 support technician.
⚡ M365 ⭐ GPT 🟠 Claude

Email Delivery Troubleshooting

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Help me diagnose email delivery failure. Scenario: [DESCRIBE — emails not received / going to spam / bouncing / delayed]. Check: (1) Message trace in Exchange Admin, (2) SPF/DKIM/DMARC alignment, (3) Transport rules that might redirect, (4) Recipient mailbox issues, (5) IP reputation, (6) Content filtering triggers. Provide step-by-step diagnosis with Exchange admin paths.
⚡ M365 ⭐ GPT
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