Understanding pending incidents in PagerDuty and what it means for on-call responders.

Ever been staring at a pager that won’t quit pinging, wondering what’s really going on in the middle of a crisis? That moment is where the term “pending incidents” shows up, steady and unglamorous, yet hugely important. In PagerDuty, pending incidents are the stuff that’s still open and waiting for someone on the on-call team to respond. They’re not just a line on a dashboard; they’re the heartbeat of operational awareness—the issues that could become outages if no one touches them.

What exactly is a pending incident?

Think of a pending incident as an active alert that hasn’t yet been acknowledged or resolved. It’s live, it’s visible, and it demands attention, but it hasn’t had a human interaction yet. The incident is still in play, meaning the clock is ticking on response time, the service is still at risk, and customers might feel the impact if the issue isn’t handled quickly.

This is different from other statuses you might see, and that distinction matters a lot in real-world workflows.

• A: Incidents that have not yet been acknowledged or resolved. This is the core idea of pending. It’s open, it’s active, and nobody has picked up the ball yet.

• B: Incidents that have been resolved and closed. These are done. The service is back to normal, and no one should be chasing them anymore.

• C: Future incidents that are scheduled for review. Those live in planning or roadmap mode, not in the live incident flow.

• D: Incidents that have been escalated to higher management. This means the issue needs more eyes, but it’s not necessarily still pending; it’s a different path of handling.

So, pending isn’t about “never mind”; it’s about “we’re still in the middle of this, and we need someone to jump in.” It’s a status that signals, to everyone watching, that action is required but hasn’t yet happened.

Why pending matters in a real-world setting

On-call life is a relay race, not a solo sprint. Pending incidents sit at the intersection of visibility and action. Here’s why they matter:

• Timeliness affects reliability. The sooner a pending incident is acknowledged, the faster it can be triaged, investigated, and resolved. Delays can ripple into longer outages, higher customer impact, and tougher post-incident reviews.

• Situational awareness saves teams. A clear list of pending incidents helps everyone know what’s currently in flight. It prevents duplicates, avoids confusion, and makes it easier to assign the right person to the right issue.

• Customer trust hinges on quick response. Even if a problem isn’t immediately solvable, acknowledging it and communicating what’s being done can reassure users that someone’s on it.

• It’s a key piece of service-level governance. Many teams track mean time to acknowledge (MTTA) and mean time to repair (MTTR). Pending incidents directly influence those metrics, so teams have a concrete incentive to keep the pending bucket as lean as possible.

What responders typically do when something is pending

Let’s walk through a practical, no-nonsense workflow you’ll recognize if you’ve spent shifts staring at dashboards.

• Acknowledge promptly. The minute you see a genuine alert that affects your service, click to acknowledge. This binds the incident to you or your team and moves it from “unseen” to “being handled.”

• Gather context. Jump into the incident details. What service is affected? What error was reported? Are there recent deploys, config changes, or known outages that line up with this incident?

• Assign and escalate strategically. If you’re the on-call person, you might be the first responder. If you’re not, you escalate to the right owner—someone who has the authority and visibility to drive a fix. Escalation isn’t a penalty; it’s a hard-stop for getting help where it’s needed.

• Communicate clearly. Update the incident with what you’ve learned, what you’re doing, and what’s next. Even a quick note like: “Investigating root cause; potential impact on checkout service; ETA for update: 10 minutes” helps everyone stay aligned.

• Triage and prioritize. Not every pending incident is the same. Some might be a minor degraded path; others could be a full outage. Decide on a plan, allocate resources, and keep reassessing as new data comes in.

• Document the action trail. What changes were made? What indicators improved? Documentation isn’t about filing a report later; it’s about building a map for future incidents to shorten your recovery curve.

A quick real-world moment

Imagine a small e-commerce site during a holiday sale. A sudden surge triggers error pages for checkout. The incident shows as pending because no one has acknowledged it yet. The on-call engineer sees it, acknowledges, and discovers the payment gateway is returning timeouts. They rotate logs, ping the gateway status, and realize a recent config change caused the failure. They revert the change, re-test, and monitor for a while. The incident finally resolves, and the team closes it with a concise post-incident note: what happened, what caused it, and what they changed to prevent a recurrence. The customer-facing impact was minimized, and the team has a clear record for the future.

Common misconceptions and how to avoid them

• Pending means “no big deal.” Not true. Pending means action is still needed. Acknowledge it, triage it, and decide on the next steps.

• Pending is the same as escalated to management. Not necessarily. Escalation can happen at a different level of the workflow. Pending is a status, not a tier of authority.

• All pending incidents are minor. Some are urgent outages in early stages. Treat each one with appropriate urgency based on impact, not just the label.

Tips for keeping pending incidents manageable

• Build a clean, visible queue. If the queue becomes a murky swamp, you’ll miss critical alerts. Clear ownership and regular checks keep things moving.

• Use labels and runbooks. Consistent tagging (like service, environment, or affect area) helps you filter faster. Simple runbooks can tell you the exact steps to take when a similar incident appears.

• Automate where it makes sense. If you can automate acknowledgment or initial triage steps, you buy precious minutes for your human responders.

• Review and reflect. After an incident is resolved, a quick debrief helps you tighten the loop for the next time. It’s not a blame game; it’s a learning moment.

A few practical takeaways to remember

• Pending incidents are alerts that aren’t yet acknowledged or resolved. They’re active and require attention.

• They sit at the core of operational visibility, shaping how quickly a team responds and how reliably services perform.

• The right actions—acknowledge, triage, assign, communicate, and document—turn pending into resolved, with lessons learned baked into the next incident.

A little mental model you can carry

Picture a newsroom during breaking news. A pending incident is the breaking alert that tugs at the editors’ attention. There’s a sense of urgency, a plan forms, reporters are assigned, and the story evolves. If you wait too long, the story loses momentum or, worse, accuracy. In PagerDuty terms, pending incidents work the same way: they demand prompt acknowledgment, precise triage, and steady updates until the issue is fixed.

If you’re responsible for keeping services resilient, you don’t just react to incidents—you shape how teams respond. Pending incidents aren’t a nuisance in the alert storm; they’re the control panel that helps you steer toward stability. When you treat pending with focus, you keep services healthier, customers happier, and your own shift a touch less chaotic.

A pocket checklist for memory

• When a pending incident appears, acknowledge right away.

• Gather context in one place: service name, error, recent changes, patient metrics.

• Decide who should own the investigation; don’t let it drift.

• Communicate with honesty: what you know, what you don’t, and what you’re doing next.

• Keep a concise log of actions and outcomes.

• Close only after you confirm the issue is resolved and the service is back to normal.

• Reflect after the incident to improve the next response.

Closing thought: the rhythm of incident response

Crises aren’t just about fixing a broken line. They’re about maintaining trust—in your service, in your team, and in the people who rely on the product every day. Pending incidents are the early heartbeat signals; when you respond to them with clarity and calm, you keep the resilience gears turning smoothly. It’s not poetry, but it sure makes the difference between a rough night and a relieved morning.

If you want to keep this idea top of mind, try a quick mental exercise: the next time you see a pending incident, pause for a moment, assess its potential impact, and outline the immediate next steps in two sentences. You’ll be surprised how often that tiny reset refines your approach and speeds up the resolution—without turning the incident into a bigger drama than it needs to be.

And that’s the essence of pending incidents: a small, persistent nudge to stay engaged, stay organized, and stay focused on keeping services up and running for the people who count on them.