Assign an Incident Role to an Escalation Policy
PagerDuty Incident Management
Availability
This workflow action is available on our Business and Enterprise for Incident Management pricing plans. Contact our Sales Team to upgrade to an account with this action.
Description
Assign an Incident Role to an Escalation Policy to automatically designate the current on-call responder in that policy to a specific role during an incident.
This action promotes sustainable incident response by distributing key responsibilities (e.g., Incident Commander, Customer Liaison) across on-call rotations, ensuring consistent coverage and preventing responder fatigue.
Prerequisite
Ensure Incident Roles are configured in your account before using this action. You can create and manage incident roles under Incident Settings Incident Roles.
Instructions
- If you have not done so, follow our instructions to Create an Incident Workflow.
- When the instructions prompt you to add actions, select this action.
- Enter the following Inputs and then click Save. Continue following instructions to Publish the Workflow. When the action runs, you will see the Outputs listed below.
Inputs
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Incident Role | Select the role to assign to the escalation policy. This assigns the role to whoever is currently on‑call in the specified escalation policy. |
| Escalation Policy | Select the escalation policy to assign the role to. The current on-call responder from this policy will be assigned to the specified incident role. |
Outputs
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Result | Indicates whether the action was successful — "Success" or "Failed." |
| Result Summary | Briefly describes what the action did or explains the reason for failure. |
| Error | Provides an error description if the action failed. |
Examples
Example 1: Automatic Incident Manager Assignment
When a major incident is triggered, automatically assign the Incident Commander role to whoever is currently on-call for the Incident Management escalation policy:
- Incident role: Incident Commander
- Escalation Policy: Incident Management On-Call
This automation removes the need to manually identify the on-call incident manager during active incidents.
Example 2: Customer Communication Assignment
When an incident is escalated to a major incident, use a workflow trigger to automatically assign the Customer Liaison role.
- Incident role: Customer Liaison
- Escalation policy: Customer Communications Management
This ensures the appropriate Customer Liaison is engaged immediately to coordinate updates and communication with customers.
Updated about 6 hours ago