Using PagerDuty actions in action flows

Before you can include external actions in your action flows, you must connect the action builder to the external system.


What's my plan?






All Suites

Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus









Support

Team, Professional, or Enterprise






Summary: ◀▼
You can connect action flows to PagerDuty to automate incident management tasks like creating, updating, acknowledging, resolving incidents, and adding notes. Use a dedicated service account for secure integration. Available actions also include searching incidents and looking up users. This integration helps streamline collaboration and incident handling by linking support workflows with PagerDuty's incident and user management features.


By connecting the action builder to external systems, such as PagerDuty,
admins can integrate Zendesk with external systems in automated workflows, improving
collaboration and maintaining a seamless experience across multiple platforms.
Note: The steps associated with external systems in action flows are
referred to collectively as external actions.

This article contains the following topics:
Using PagerDuty actions in action flows
Connecting PagerDuty to action builder




Connecting PagerDuty to action builder

Before you can include external actions in your action flows, you must connect the
action builder to the external system.
When connecting to external systems for use in action flows, the following best practices are recommended:
All external actions performed by an action flow are attributed to the user who connected the
external system. Therefore, it's a best practice to use a dedicated service
account rather than personal credentials when connecting to each external
system.
All integrations request access to necessary scopes. However, it's important that you review and validate the scopes before authorizing the connection to the external system.
When managing credentials for API key-based tools, such as OpenAI, it's best to store keys in a secure vault or credential manager.



To connect action builder to PagerDuty
In Admin Center, click
Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Actions > Action
flows.

Create or edit an action flow.
Open the step sidebar.
Under External actions, click PagerDuty.
Click Connect.
Follow PagerDuty's prompts to authenticate and complete the
connection. The PagerDuty connection uses the OAuth 2.0 authorization
code flow to securely access your PagerDuty account. Review the
permissions carefully before authorizing the connection. These
permissions allow action flows to manage incidents and users in your
PagerDuty account on your behalf. When you connect PagerDuty, you will
be redirected to PagerDuty to authorize access.
The From
Email field is required for certain PagerDuty token types.
If your integration requires it, provide the email address of the user
performing the action.

Note: All external
actions performed by an action flow are attributed to the user who
connected the external system. Therefore, it is a best practice to use a
dedicated service account rather than personal credentials when
connecting to each external system.



After you've connected to the system, you'll see an indicator that it's connected and
details about the instance you're connected to, as well as the actions available for
PagerDuty.



Using PagerDuty actions in action flows

The following PagerDuty actions are available:
Create incident
Update incident
Lookup incident by
ID
Search incidents
Create note on
incident
Acknowledge
incident
Resolve incident
Lookup user




Creating an incident

Use the Create incident action to create an incident in PagerDuty tied to
a specific service, useful for human-created incidents or orchestration flows
that require immediate incident creation.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs
Required: Title,
Service Optional:
Details, Urgency,
Assignee User ID, Incident
Key, From Email
The
Urgency field accepts two values: high or
low.



Output
Incident details including ID, incident number, status,
title, service information, and HTML URL.








Updating an incident

Use the Update incident action to update fields of an existing incident
such as title, status (acknowledge or resolve), urgency, priority, or assignee,
useful for lifecycle changes or reassignments.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs
Required: Incident ID Optional:
Status, Title,
Urgency, Priority,
Assignee User ID,
Resolution, From
Email
The Urgency field accepts two
values: high or low.
The Status field accepts
values: triggered, acknowledged, or
resolved.



Output
Incident details including ID, incident number, status,
title, urgency, service information, priority information,
and HTML URL.








Looking up an incident by ID

Use the Lookup incident by ID action to retrieve a single incident by its
unique ID for inspection or conditional logic.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs
Required: Incident ID



Output
Incident details including ID, incident number, status,
title, description, urgency, service information, and HTML
URL.








Searching incidents

Use the Search incidents action to list or search incidents with optional
filters such as status, date range, service, or urgency. This action is useful
for reporting or bulk automation decisions.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs
Optional: Status,
Service, Urgency,
Since, Until,
Limit, Offset The
Urgency field accepts two values: high or low.
The
Status field accepts values: triggered, acknowledged, or
resolved.
The Since and Until fields use the ISO
8601 date format (for example, 2026-01-15
T10:00:00Z).



Output
Array of incidents with pagination information including
more flag, limit, offset, and total count.








Creating a note on an incident

Use the Create note on incident action to add a timeline note to an
incident that is visible in the incident timeline. This action is useful for
sharing updates or context.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs
Required: Incident ID,
Content Optional: From
Email



Output
Note ID, content, and creation timestamp.








Acknowledging an incident

Use the Acknowledge incident action to acknowledge an incident and
indicate that someone has taken ownership, implemented as an update to incident
status.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs
Required: Incident ID, From
Email



Output
Incident details including ID, incident number, status,
title, service information, and HTML URL.








Resolving an incident

Use the Resolve incident action to resolve an incident and close it,
implemented as an update to incident status.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs
Required: Incident ID Optional:
From Email



Output
Incident details including ID, incident number, status,
title, service information, and HTML URL.








Looking up a user

Use the Lookup user action to retrieve a single PagerDuty user by ID or
email. Provide either User ID or Email. If User ID is provided, it takes
precedence.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs

Optional: User ID,
Email



Output
User details including ID, name, email, role, and HTML
URL.








{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "TechArticle",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10850616549786-Using-PagerDuty-actions-in-action-flows",
"url": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10850616549786-Using-PagerDuty-actions-in-action-flows",
"headline": "Using PagerDuty actions in action flows",
"description": "You can connect the action builder to PagerDuty to automate incident management tasks such as creating, updating, and resolving incidents within action flows by using external actions securely authorized via OAuth 2.0.",
"articleSection": "Product help",
"datePublished": "2026-06-01T18:18:07.318124+00:00",
"dateModified": "2026-06-01T18:18:09.441937+00:00",
"inLanguage": "en-US",
"mainEntityOfPage": {
"@type": "WebPage",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10850616549786-Using-PagerDuty-actions-in-action-flows"