Understand recovery and incident reopening

Learn how passing results close failures and changed values reopen resolved issues.

Last checked 21 August 2026

An open incident reflects the latest failure after resolution and ignore rules are applied. It closes when a later check no longer finds that failure. It can return after another failure, changed resolved evidence, or removal of an ignore rule. A severity increase updates an unresolved incident instead.

Natural recovery

For page checks, a result recovers when it changes from fail to pass. The open list uses the latest completed result, so the failing card disappears. Website-level findings are compared across refreshes. If an earlier issue is absent from the refreshed results, TechDash treats it as recovered.

Use Check & Verify to request the relevant work immediately after a fix. Otherwise, normal scheduled checks can detect the recovery.

The open card disappearing is the main recovery outcome. A pass means the check found no qualifying failure. Good is the healthy status shown for a pass or recovery, not an incident severity. The recovered incident also stops affecting Health Score.

Recovery notifications

Go to Notifications and set Notify when a check recovers to On if you want eligible recovery messages. Recovery delivery still follows notification rules:

  • Built-in Warning and Critical checks are eligible.
  • Built-in Advisory checks are not eligible.
  • A Custom Check follows its Notify control.
  • The relevant desktop or webhook channel must be configured and enabled.
  • Page-level channel settings also apply to page checks.

A recovery can close an incident without a notification when recovery messages are Off, the check is Advisory, or no enabled channel applies.

Reopening after a natural recovery

If a naturally recovered page check later changes from pass back to fail, it creates a new failure transition. The incident reappears and can notify through eligible channels.

For website-level sources, an incident that was absent and later appears again is also treated as a new failure event. Search Console, site-resource, SSL certificate, domain registration and expiry, and DNS findings return when refreshed data meets the failure conditions again.

Repeated runs that continue to fail do not repeatedly send the same transition notification. The incident remains open with its latest evidence.

What Mark Resolved changes

Mark Resolved does not create a pass. It stores the exact current observed failing value for the website, scope, and check. TechDash filters that matching incident from the open list.

A later different failing value no longer matches the resolution, so the incident reappears. If the check passes, the failure is absent as usual. The saved resolution is not automatically deleted by that pass. If the same observed failure later returns, the old resolution can continue to suppress it.

Use Check & Verify instead when you have fixed the underlying condition and want a later recurrence of the same failure to remain visible.

What Ignore changes

Ignore This stores a check rule for a URL, website, or all websites. It suppresses every matching observed value, not just the value shown when you created the rule. Matching incidents and notifications stay suppressed until you remove the rule.

When you select Remove rule under Notifications > Ignored Checks, a currently failing stored result can reappear immediately. TechDash does not need a new crawl merely to stop filtering that existing evidence.

Severity escalation

Some incidents can change severity while remaining open. When an eligible incident moves higher, TechDash treats the escalation as another failure notification event. Certificate and domain expiry are common examples.

A change from Warning to Critical does not require the incident to close first. It escalates an incident that is already unresolved; it is not a reopening event. A lower or unchanged severity does not produce the same escalation event.

For a manually resolved incident, resolution matching ignores severity. Escalation alone does not make the incident reappear. It returns only when the observed evidence changes enough that the saved resolution no longer matches.

If recovery seems delayed

  1. Confirm the corrected state is publicly reachable from the TechDash computer.
  2. Open the incident and select Check & Verify.
  3. For checks assembled from results across the website, refresh affected page data before recalculating.
  4. For DNS, certificate, or domain data, allow for external propagation.
  5. For Search Console, review URL Inspection quotas and delayed or missing data.
  6. Review Latest results to see whether the check passed, failed, skipped, or errored.
  7. Confirm that you did not use Mark Resolved when you intended to verify a pass.

The incident list is based on completed, stored check results. Editing a website does not close the card until TechDash finishes the relevant check and the latest stored results no longer contain the failure.

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