---
title: PagerDuty action
description: Use the PagerDuty action to create events in PagerDuty. To create PagerDuty events, you must configure at least one PagerDuty account in elasticsearch.yml...
url: https://www.elastic.co/elastic/docs-builder/docs/3028/explore-analyze/alerting/watcher/actions-pagerduty
products:
- Elasticsearch
applies_to:
- Elastic Stack: Generally available
---
# PagerDuty action
Use the PagerDuty action to create events in [ PagerDuty](https://pagerduty.com/). To create PagerDuty events, you must [configure at least one PagerDuty account](#configuring-pagerduty) in `elasticsearch.yml`.
## Configuring PagerDuty actions
You configure PagerDuty actions in the `actions` array. Action-specific attributes are specified using the `pagerduty` keyword.
The following snippet shows a simple PagerDuty action definition:
```json
"actions" : {
"notify-pagerduty" : {
"transform" : { ... },
"throttle_period" : "5m",
"pagerduty" : {
"description" : "Main system down, please check!"
}
}
}
```
## Adding meta information to a PagerDuty incident
To give the PagerDuty incident some more context, you can attach the payload as well as an array of contexts to the action.
```json
"actions" : {
"notify-pagerduty" : {
"throttle_period" : "5m",
"pagerduty" : {
"account" : "team1",
"description" : "Main system down, please check! Happened at {{ctx.execution_time}}",
"attach_payload" : true,
"client" : "/foo/bar/{{ctx.watch_id}}",
"client_url" : "http://www.example.org/",
"contexts" : [
{
"type": "link",
"href": "http://acme.pagerduty.com"
},{
"type": "link",
"href": "http://acme.pagerduty.com",
"text": "View the incident on {{ctx.payload.link}}"
}
]
}
}
}
```
## Pagerduty action attributes
| Name | Required | Description |
|-----------|----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| `account` | no | The account to use, falls back to the default one. The account needs a `service_api_key` attribute. |
Although some of the attributes below have names which match the PagerDuty "Events API v1" parameter names, the "Events API v2" API is finally used by translating the attributes appropriately.
| Name | Required | Description |
|------------------|----------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| `description` | yes | A quick description for this event |
| `event_type` | no | The event type to sent. Must be one of `trigger`, `resolve` or `acknowledge`. Defaults to `trigger`. |
| `incident_key` | no | The incident key on the pagerduty side, also used for de-duplication and allows to resolve or acknowledge incidents. |
| `client` | no | Name of the client triggering the incident, i.e. `Watcher Monitoring` |
| `client_url` | no | A client URL to visit to get more detailed information. |
| `attach_payload` | no | If set to `true` the payload is attached as a detail to the API call. Defaults to `false`. |
| `contexts` | no | An array of objects, that allow you to provide additional links or images in order to provide more context to the trigger. |
| `proxy.host` | no | The proxy host to use (only in combination with `proxy.port`) |
| `proxy.port` | no | The proxy port to use (only in combination with `proxy.host`) |
You can configure defaults for the above values for the whole service using the `xpack.notification.pagerduty.event_defaults.*` properties as well as per account using `xpack.notification.pagerduty.account.your_account_name.event_defaults.*`
All of those objects have templating support, so you can use data from the context and the payload as part of all the fields.
| Name | Required | Description |
|--------|----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| `type` | yes | One of `link` or `image`. |
| `href` | yes/no | A link to include more information. Must be there if the type is `link`, optional if the type is `image` |
| `src` | no | A src attribute for the `image` type. |
## Configuring PagerDuty accounts
You configure the accounts Watcher uses to communicate with PagerDuty in the `xpack.notification.pagerduty` namespace in [`elasticsearch.yml`](https://www.elastic.co/elastic/docs-builder/docs/3028/deploy-manage/stack-settings).
To configure a PagerDuty account, you need the API integration key for the PagerDuty service you want to send notifications to. To get the key:
1. Log in to [pagerduty.com](http://pagerduty.com) as an account administrator.
2. Go to **Services** and select the PagerDuty service you wish to target.
3. Click the **Integrations** tab and add an **Events API V2** integration if one does not already exist.
4. Copy the API integration key for use below.
To configure a PagerDuty account in the keystore, you must specify an account name and integration key, (see [Secure settings](https://www.elastic.co/elastic/docs-builder/docs/3028/deploy-manage/security/secure-settings)):
```yaml
bin/elasticsearch-keystore add xpack.notification.pagerduty.account.my_pagerduty_account.secure_service_api_key
```
Storing the service api key in the YAML file or via cluster update settings is still supported, but the keystore setting should be used.
You can also specify defaults for the [PagerDuty event attributes](#pagerduty-event-trigger-incident-attributes):
```yaml
xpack.notification.pagerduty:
account:
my_pagerduty_account:
event_defaults:
description: "Watch notification"
incident_key: "my_incident_key"
client: "my_client"
client_url: http://www.example.org
event_type: trigger
attach_payload: true
```
If you configure multiple PagerDuty accounts, you either need to set a default account or specify which account the event should be sent with in the `pagerduty` action.
```yaml
xpack.notification.pagerduty:
default_account: team1
account:
team1:
...
team2:
...
```