Sending an Alert Event

Endpoint

https://events.pagerduty.com/v2/enqueue

Parameters

Parameters	Type	Description
routing_key Required	String	This is the 32 character Integration Key for an integration on a service or on a global ruleset.
event_action Required	String	The type of event. Can be trigger, acknowledge or resolve.
dedup_key	String	Deduplication key for correlating triggers and resolves. The maximum permitted length of this property is 255 characters.
payload.summary Required	String	A brief text summary of the event, used to generate the summaries/titles of any associated alerts. The maximum permitted length of this property is 1024 characters.
payload.source Required	String	The unique location of the affected system, preferably a hostname or FQDN.
payload.severity Required	String	The perceived severity of the status the event is describing with respect to the affected system. This can be critical, error, warning or info.
payload.timestamp	timestamp	The time at which the emitting tool detected or generated the event.
payload.component	String	Component of the source machine that is responsible for the event, for example mysql or eth0
payload.group	String	Logical grouping of components of a service, for example app-stack
payload.class	String	The class/type of the event, for example ping failure or cpu load
payload.custom_details	Object	Additional details about the event and affected system
images	Array of Objects	List of images to include.
links	Array of Objects	List of links to include.

Alert De-Duplication

Every alert event has a dedup_key: a string which identifies the alert triggered for the given event. The dedup_key can be specified when submitting the first trigger event that creates an alert. If omitted, it will be generated automatically by PagerDuty and returned in the Events API v2 response.

Submitting subsequent events with the same dedup_key will result in those events being applied to an open alert matching that dedup_key. Once the alert is resolved, any further events with the same dedup_key will create a new alert (for trigger events) or be dropped (for acknowledge and resolve events). Alerts will only be created for events with an event_action of trigger. Acknowledge or resolve events without a currently open alert will not create a new one.

Subsequent events for the same dedup_key will only apply to the open alert if the events are sent via the same routing_key as the original trigger event. Subsequent acknowledge or resolve events sent via a different routing_key from the original will be dropped.

A trigger event sent without a dedup_key will always generate a new alert because the automatically generated dedup_key will be a unique UUID.

Alerts can be further grouped into Incidents, for centralizing incident response and context. For more information on the way events, alerts, and incidents interact, please see this knowledge base article.

Event Action Behavior

Three actions can be specified in the event_action parameter. Each represents a different type of activity.

Event Action	Behavior in PagerDuty
trigger	A new alert is opened or a trigger log entry is created on an existing alert if one already exists with the same dedup_key. Use this event action when a new problem has been detected. Additional triggers may be sent when a previously detected problem has occurred again.
acknowledge	The incident referenced with the dedup_key will enter the acknowledged state. While an incident is acknowledged, it won't generate any additional notifications, even if it receives new trigger events. Use this event action to indicate that someone is presently working on the problem.
resolve	The incident referenced with the dedup_key will enter the resolved state. Once an incident is resolved, it won't generate any additional notifications. New trigger events with the same incident_key / dedup_keyas a resolved incident won't re-open the incident. Instead, a new incident will be created. Use this event action when the problem that caused the initial trigger event has been fixed.

Example Request Payloads

Trigger

/*
  This example shows how to send a trigger event without a dedup_key.
  In this case, PagerDuty will automatically assign a random and unique key
  and return it in the response object.
  You should store this key in case you want to send an acknowledge or resolve
  event to this incident in the future.
*/
{
  "payload": {
    "summary": "Example alert on host1.example.com",
    "timestamp": "2015-07-17T08:42:58.315+0000",
    "source": "monitoringtool:cloudvendor:central-region-dc-01:852559987:cluster/api-stats-prod-003",
    "severity": "info",
    "component": "postgres",
    "group": "prod-datapipe",
    "class": "deploy",
    "custom_details": {
      "ping time": "1500ms",
      "load avg": 0.75
    }
  },
  "routing_key": "samplekeyhere",
  "dedup_key": "samplekeyhere",
  "images": [
    {
      "src": "https://www.pagerduty.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/pagerduty-logo-green.png",
      "href": "https://example.com/",
      "alt": "Example text"
    }
  ],
  "links": [
    {
      "href": "https://example.com/",
      "text": "Link text"
    }
  ],
  "event_action": "trigger",
  "client": "Sample Monitoring Service",
  "client_url": "https://monitoring.example.com"
}

Acknowledge

{
  "routing_key": "routingkeyhere",
  "dedup_key": "dedupkeyhere",
  "event_action": "acknowledge"
}

Resolve

{
  "routing_key": "routingkeyhere",
  "dedup_key": "dedupkeyhere",
  "event_action": "resolve"
}

Responses and Limits

See the Events API v2 Overview page for response codes and limits.

Context Properties

These properties can be used to attach informational assets to the incident record. Each element of these arrays is an object.

The images Property

This property is used to attach images to the incident. Each object in the list has the following properties:

Name	Required	Description
src	Yes	The source (URL) of the image being attached to the incident. This image must be served via HTTPS.
href	No	Optional URL; makes the image a clickable link.
alt	No	Optional alternative text for the image.

The links Property

This property is used to attach text links to the incident. Each object in the list has the following properties:

Name	Required	Description
href	Yes	URL of the link to be attached.
text	No	Plain text that describes the purpose of the link, and can be used as the link's text.

Try it Out

The Events API v2 requires a routing_key. You can create an Events API v2 integration on any PagerDuty service in order to get a routing key that will route an event to that service. You can also use an integration key from a ruleset to send alert events.

Try it out here