# Step 5 - Report an incident
Reporting incidents, maintenance, or information notices in your StatusPal Admin Dashboard couldn't be easier.
From anywhere in the Admin UI, you'll always have available an "Update status" button at the top left, next to the StatusPal logo:
The "Update status" button lets you not only create a new incident but also update existing ones.
Alternatively, if you're on the Dashboard or Incidents page, you'll have a "Create new" button that allows you to create new incidents, maintenance, or information notices.
### Reporting a new incident
The main components when reporting incidents are:
1. **Title**: Short description of what the incident is about
2. **Incident type**: The severity of the incident. By default, you can select from minor and major, but you can customize these types.
3. **Affected services**: Select the services that are impacted by this incident.
4. **Initial update**:
1. Type: Describes the initial status of the incident. Is it already being investigated or monitored? Is it a retroactive report?
2. Description: Describe in more detail what the incident is about and what's the current status of it.
5. **Tweet**: Send a tweet automatically from the incident details. The first time you check this, you'll be asked to authenticate with the desired Twitter account.
6. **Notify subscribers:** Send notifications according to your [previously configured notification channels](https://docs.statuspal.io/get-started/step-4-enable-notifications) and according to the subscriptions configured.
After filling out the necessary fields in the "New incident" form, make sure to check "Notify subscribers," click on `Create,` and the incident should be created. And, if you followed our previous [step-4-enable-notifications](https://docs.statuspal.io/get-started/step-4-enable-notifications "mention"), a notification should be sent to you.
### Report a maintenance
Reporting maintenance is not very different than reporting an incident.
1. A maintenance, unlike an incident, can be **reported for the future**, for "scheduled" maintenances. An end date is automatically calculated one hour after the future date, but this can be easily changed.
2. The **initial update type** can be one of
1. Scheduled: for planned maintenance window in the future.
2. Essential: for unplanned maintenance that's required to start right away.
3. **Auto-maintenance notifications**: When reporting maintenance in the future, we can send automatic notifications before, on start, and at the end of the maintenance. This is all configurable in the `Subscription settings` page.
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