Managing Incidents

Once incidents are recorded, you need to find them, review them, and keep them up to date. Signal provides powerful tools for searching, filtering, and managing your incident records.

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Viewing the incident list

The incident list shows all student incidents you have access to. You can find it by clicking Incidents in the sidebar navigation.

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Searching

Use the search bar at the top of the incident list to find specific incidents. You can search by student name, keywords in the description, or other details. Search also looks inside attached documents. If a letter from the local authority, a social care report or a set of meeting minutes is attached to an incident, the words in that file are searched alongside the incident’s own title, description and comments.

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Filtering

Narrow down the list using filters. You can filter by:

• Search — match student name, keywords, other details, or text inside attached documents
• Start Date and End Date — show incidents from a specific time period
• Category — show only incidents of specific concern types
• Event Type — show incidents linked to specific event types
• Location — show incidents that occurred at a particular location
• Academic Years — show incidents from specific academic years
• Classes — show incidents for students in particular classes
• Student Groups — show incidents for students in specific groups
• Staff Member — show incidents involving a particular staff member
• Child Protection Status — show incidents for students with a particular child protection status
• Show deleted — include deleted incidents in the results

Filters can be combined to get exactly the view you need. For example, you might filter for all Physical incidents at the Playground in the last term.

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The incident card

Click any incident in the list to open its detail view. The incident card is the primary way to view and interact with an incident. It shows all information about the concern and provides actions for follow-up.

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What you see on the incident card

Each incident card displays:

• Students — the main student(s) and any linked students
• Date and time of the incident
• Location and event badges (if applicable)
• Description — the full incident description with any @mentions
• Creation and edit metadata — who created it, when, and whether it has been edited

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Shared incident history

When an incident involves two or more students, a small chart icon appears beside the student names. Click it to see how often those same children have appeared in incidents together in the past, plotted month by month. This answers a question that is otherwise slow to check: is this a one-off between these pupils, or part of a pattern? A history that is scattered across a couple of months reads very differently from one that has been building steadily all year.

• Each month’s column or band is broken down by category, using your school’s category colours, so you can see whether the shared history is all one type of concern or a mix.
• Hover over any month to see the exact number of shared incidents and which categories they fall under.
• The chart scrolls sideways when the history is long, and opens on the most recent months.
• A short history is shown as bars; once there are enough shared incidents to show a trend, Signal switches to a filled area chart.
• The count beneath the chart tells you how many shared incidents it is based on.

If the incident involves three or more students, tick boxes appear above the chart. Every student starts ticked, and the chart shows only incidents involving all of the ticked children together. Untick a pupil to widen the search to the remaining pupils — useful when you want to check whether two of the group have a longer history with each other than the group as a whole.

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AI Summary

If Signal has generated a summary for the incident, it appears in a collapsible AI Summary section. This provides a concise overview of the concern and any patterns identified.

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Short Term Actions

Click Create Short Term Actions on the incident card to generate AI-powered recommendations. Signal analyses the incident description, student history, and relevant policies to suggest practical next steps. These recommendations can be reviewed, edited, and saved as comments on the incident.

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Relevant Policies

The incident card shows which safeguarding policies are relevant to this concern. Policies matched by AI are highlighted, while manually linked policies are shown separately. Click a policy to view the full document.

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Action Plans

If the incident is linked to any action plans, they appear as badges on the card. Click an action plan badge to navigate to the plan detail page.

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Action buttons

The incident card provides several actions. Some sit directly on the card, while others are grouped under the More actions (⋮) menu:

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Comments and documents

The bottom of the incident card shows the comments section and documents section side by side. You can add comments with @mentions, upload new documents, and view existing attachments directly from the card.

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Editing incidents

You can edit an incident to update its details as the situation develops. Open the incident and click Edit to modify:

• The description
• Categories
• Location
• Linked students
• Attached documents

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Edit history

Signal tracks every change made to an incident. Each edit is recorded with the name of the person who made it, a timestamp, and which fields changed (for example “Description, Categories”). This ensures full accountability and means you can always see how a record has evolved over time. When an edit changes the description or a custom field value, Signal requires a reason for the change — the narrative of a safeguarding record must never change silently. Edits to other details (categories, location, incident date, linked students, documents) don’t require a reason, but still leave an entry in the history. Saving without changing anything records nothing — the incident is only marked as edited when something actually changed. The edit history is visible on the incident detail view, so anyone reviewing the incident can see what was changed, when, and why.

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Visibility exclusions

Visibility exclusions control which staff members can see a specific incident. Open Manage Visibility on the incident to set them — you can restrict to DSLs only, exclude individual staff, or exclude whole Staff Groups. You can set exclusions when creating an incident or edit them afterwards. This is one of three ways to control who can see safeguarding records, alongside student restrictions and workflow exclusions. Per-incident exclusions add to your school’s workflow rules — anyone hidden by either stays hidden. For the full picture, see Managing incident visibility.

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Marking incidents as viewed

Your dashboard highlights incidents you have not yet looked at. When you open one of those incidents from the dashboard, Signal marks it as viewed and it stops being flagged as new to you. Opening the same incident from the incidents list or from a student’s profile does not mark it as viewed.

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Deleting incidents

In rare cases, you may need to delete an incident — for example, if it was created in error or contains duplicate information. When you delete an incident, Signal asks you to type a reason. The incident is then removed from everyday view, but it is not destroyed: safeguarding leads can still find it by turning on the Show deleted filter on the incident list, where it appears with the reason you gave shown as its title.

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Document management

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Uploading documents

You can attach documents to an incident at any time — both during creation and afterwards. Click the document upload area on the incident to add files such as photos, reports, letters, or screenshots.

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Viewing documents

Attached documents appear on the incident detail view. Click a document to view or download it.

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Removing documents

If a document was attached in error, you can remove it from the incident. Removing a document detaches it from the incident.