Configuring Incident Categories

Incident categories in Serenity help your organization classify and analyze safety events based on type, severity, and context. Accurate categorization supports better trend analysis, compliance reporting, and targeted corrective actions.

What Are Incident Categories?

Each incident in the system can be tagged with:

A Primary Category — the main classification of the event
One or more Secondary Categories — optional tags that provide additional detail

This structure allows for flexible reporting and helps identify patterns across different types of events.

Default Categories

Serenity ships with a set of industry-aligned categories enabled by default. These include:

Category	Level
Injury	Primary
Illness	Primary
Near Miss	Primary
Property Damage	Primary
Vehicle Damage	Primary
Hazard	Primary
Slip/Trip/Fall	Primary
Release (e.g., spill)	Primary
Product Defect	Primary
Reportable Incident	Secondary
Privacy Case	Secondary
Recordable	Secondary
Death	Secondary

💡The Level field determines how a category can be applied to an incident:

Primary: Can be selected as the main (primary) category of an incident, or as an additional category
Secondary: Can only be used as an additional category to provide more context — it cannot be selected as the primary classification

Customizing Categories

Currently, category customization must be done through your Serenity support contact. Organizations can:

Rename or remove existing categories
Add new primary or secondary categories
Enable or disable categories based on your organizational needs

🔧 To request changes, contact your Serenity Customer Success or Support representative.

🚧 Coming Soon: Self-Service Management

We’re working on a self-service configuration page that will allow EHS Admins to:

Enable/disable categories
Add new custom categories
Control default priority levels
Manage visibility and order of category options

This new settings page will be accessible directly within the Incident Management Admin Console — no support ticket required.

✅ Best Practices

Use Primary Categories for broad incident types (e.g., Injury, Property Damage)
Use Secondary Categories to tag incidents with other categorizations required for summary level reporting
Regularly review categories to keep your system clean and relevant
Keep naming consistent across locations to simplify reporting and training