Draft an incident or outage update

Give it what you know, what you don’t, and what you’re doing; get a calm update, a chat version, and a ready-to-adapt “resolved” version.

The prompt

Draft an internal update about [the incident, e.g., the payroll system outage].

Context: what we know: [facts confirmed so far]. What we don’t know yet: [list]. What we’re doing: [actions underway]. Impact: [who is affected and how]. Next update: [time].

Audience: [all employees / affected teams], who need to know whether they must do anything.

Tone: calm, factual, and specific; no speculation, no blame.

Must include:

– Status in the first line (investigating / identified / resolved)

– What’s affected and what still works

– What employees should do, or explicitly that they don’t need to do anything

– When and where the next update will appear

Constraints: under 150 words; no technical detail beyond what changes someone’s actions.

Output: the update, plus a two-line version for Teams or Slack, plus a “resolved” version I can adapt when it’s over.

Copy prompt Try in CoAuthor

Works in

Any AI tool

How to use

Keep "what we don’t know yet" in — an update that admits uncertainty is trusted more than one that hides it.