Elasticsearch: Search Logs

Business

Description

The action runs a search against the Index Pattern you specify using Lucene, KQL, EQL, or Query DSL, and returns up to Max Results documents (allowed range 1–1000; default 100). Use it to pull logs or events from Elasticsearch while you investigate or automate around an incident.

PagerDuty does not inject a default time range. For time-bounded results, include time constraints in your query (for example in Query DSL with a range filter on @timestamp) or as supported by your query type and index mappings.

Prerequisites

• An Elasticsearch cluster reachable from PagerDuty over HTTPS (compatible with Elasticsearch 7.x or 8.x; confirm with your administrator).
• An Elasticsearch API key with permission for connection validation and for searching your index patterns.
• An Elasticsearch connection in PagerDuty. See the Elasticsearch subsection in Workflow Integrations .

Instructions

1. If you have not done so, follow the instructions to Create an Incident Workflow.
2. When the instructions prompt you to add actions, select this action.
3. Enter the following Inputs and click Save.
4. Continue following instructions to Publish the Workflow.
5. When the action runs, you will see the Outputs listed below.

Inputs

Name	Description
Connection Input	The Elasticsearch Workflow Integration connection (Elasticsearch URL and API Key configured in PagerDuty). If you have not yet configured a Elasticsearch integration, please see the Elasticsearch Integration instructions.
Index Pattern	Index pattern to search (for example logs-*, filebeat-*, logstash-*). This value is used in the request path to Elasticsearch.
Query Type	Lucene (default), KQL, EQL, or Query DSL. See Query types below.
Query	The search string or JSON for the selected query type.
Max Results	Maximum number of documents to return. Allowed range: 1–1000. Default: 100.

Query Types

Lucene — Sent to Elasticsearch _search using a query_string query with your Query text.

KQL — Sent to _search using a query_string query with lenient parsing and default operator AND. KQL and Lucene are not identical; verify results against your data.

EQL — Sent to _eql/search with your Query as the EQL expression and Max Results as the request size.

Query DSL — Query must be valid JSON for the inner query object only (not the full request body). PagerDuty wraps it as { "query": <your JSON>, "size": <Max Results> } and sends it to _search. Invalid JSON produces an error.

Outputs

Name	Description
Logs	JSON array of matching documents (fields such as _index, _id, _source, and a derived timestamp when present). Empty array if the search fails or returns no hits.
Log Count	Number of documents in Logs for this response.
Query Used	The Query input as processed for the action.
Index Pattern Used	The Index Pattern that was searched.
Total Hits	Total matching documents reported by Elasticsearch (may exceed Log Count when limited by Max Results).
Search Duration	Query execution time as reported by Elasticsearch (for example 42ms).
Result	Success or Failed.
Result Summary	Brief description of what the action did or if it failed. Example: "Successfully retrieved 42 logs."
Error	Populated when the action fails (for example authentication, index not found, or invalid Query DSL).

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