Overview

Custom property fields enable you to capture important attributes unique to your organization, such as specific product models in the automotive industry or unique codes in a software deployment. These attributes help you efficiently categorize incidents.

You can use custom fields to filter for specific subsets of incidents on the Incident Management page and in Incident Management Analytics. You can also build conditions around custom fields in incident notification rules.

Field sections

Property fields are organized into three tables that correspond to where the fields appear in the Overview tab of the Incident Details page:

1. What Happened
2. Why It Happened
3. Attributes

You can move or reorder property fields by dragging them using the drag handle icon.

Default fields

There are five default fields:

Note: You cannot delete default fields.

Field types

You can define new fields of any of the following field types:

Single Select

A dropdown that accepts one value. You set the available values when defining the field.

Multi Select

A dropdown that accepts multiple values. You set the available values when defining the field.

Text Array

A free-form field that accepts multiple values. Incident responders set arbitrary values when setting the field on an incident.

Text Area

A free-form text box that accepts a single value. Incident responders set arbitrary values when setting the field on an incident.

Metric Tag

A dropdown that accepts multiple values. Incident responders are prompted to select any ingested values of the metric tag you select when defining the field.

Number

Accepts any integer or decimal number.

Datetime

Accepts any datetime. Values are stored in UTC and are parsed and formatted using the user’s local timezone.

Required at declaration

If you mark a field as “Required at Declaration,” users are required to enter a value when declaring incidents. This option does not affect Datadog Workflow automations or API requests.

Prompt user

Incident Management can be configured to prompt responders to set particular fields when changing the incident’s state. To set this behavior for a field, edit the field’s “Prompt user” option.

During declaration: Users are prompted to enter a value for the field during declaration and at all state changes if the field is empty.

When the incident is moved to Stable/Resolved/Completed: Users are prompted to enter a value for the field when moving the incident to the selected state and any later state. For example, if you select “When the incident is moved to Stable,” users are prompted to fill out the field when moving incidents to Stable, Resolved, or Completed.

Custom fields in search and analytics

Single-Select, Multi-Select, Text Array, Number, and Datetime fields are searchable facets in the Incident Homepage and Incident Management Analytics.

In Incident Management Analytics, number fields appear as measures that can be graphed and visualized in Dashboards and Notebooks.