Shift Agent transforms the way teams manage on-call schedules by bringing AI-powered automation to PagerDuty. Designed for on-call managers, team leads, and incident responders, it eliminates the time-consuming complexity of managing schedule conflicts and coverage gaps. The system works continuously in the background—monitoring calendars, detecting potential conflicts, identifying qualified replacements, and coordinating schedule changes—all without manual intervention. By automating these traditionally manual tasks, Shift Agent helps ensure reliable operational coverage while giving valuable time back to your teams and helping maintain healthy work-life balance for your responders.

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Availability

Agents are a PagerDuty Advance feature. PagerDuty Advance is available through one-time credits or as an add-on with the following pricing plans: Professional, Business, and Enterprise. Please contact our Sales Team if you would like to upgrade to a plan featuring PagerDuty Advance.

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Required User Permissions

PagerDuty Advance permissions for configuration are the same across all agents. After PagerDuty is configured, any user can interact with the Shift Agent.

An Admin or the Account Owner can configure the Google Calendar Extension.

Configure Shift Agent

Shift Agent has two primary functions:

• Intelligent Conflict Detection
• Google Calendar Extension

Intelligent Conflict Detection

PagerDuty's Shift Agent is an AI-powered scheduling assistant that automatically manages on-call coverage conflicts. It monitors responder calendars, detects scheduling conflicts, and coordinates coverage changes—all without manual intervention. By automating these traditionally time-consuming tasks, Shift Agent eliminates coverage gaps, reduces scheduling stress, and ensures operational readiness. This allows teams to focus on critical work while maintaining confidence in their on-call coverage.

By default, Shift Agent is activated for all customers who have enabled PagerDuty Advance. A future version of the agent will allow Admins and the Account Owner to toggle Shift Agent on or off in their PagerDuty account settings.

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Prerequisites

• PagerDuty Advance must be enabled for your account.
• Users must have appropriate permissions to manage on-call schedules and integrations.
• A chat integration (e.g., Slack Integration Guide | PagerDuty) must be successfully configured and enabled for PagerDuty Advance.

Extension for Google Calendar

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Availability

The Google Calendar Extension is available on all pricing plans.

The Google Calendar Extension automatically syncs your team's calendar events with PagerDuty, allowing Shift Agent to detect scheduling conflicts before they impact coverage. This integration eliminates manual availability updates and helps maintain operational continuity while respecting responders' scheduled commitments.

1. In Google Workspace, following the instructions to Create a service account so that you can share your credentials with PagerDuty.
2. In the top-left, navigate to APIs & Services OAuth consent screen.
3. Select Data Access and Click or remove scopes.
4. Click the Filter search field and select Scope.
5. Search and select https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.events.freebusy.
6. Enable the checkbox and click Update.

8. In the PagerDuty web app, navigate to Integrations Extensions.
9. Click New Extension and select Google Calendar.
10. On the Google Calendar extension page, upload your Google Workspace token file. See Google's documentation for more information about finding your Google Workspace access token: need a link.
    1. Note: Only one file can be added for each Google Workspace.

Disable Shift Agent

To disable Shift Agent for your entire account, please contact our Technical Support team.

User Guide

Check Responder Availability

In a PagerDuty Advance chat, enter a message such as, I am on vacation June 13. Do I have a conflict?. Depending on your availability, PagerDuty Advance will offer contextual suggestions, such as Create override manually or Find coverage.

Request Coverage

Shift Agent can automatically find a replacement for an on-call shift. Click Request coverage to reach out to suggested candidates. They will receive a message based on their configured notification rules.

You will receive an update once a candidate accepts the shift. Shift Agent will automatically update on-call schedules and maintain a record of all changes.

If no one responds within 24 hours, or if all candidates decline, you will also be notified.

Configure Notification Rules

Users can configure their Notification Rules to customize how Shift Agent contacts them.

Shift Conflicts

PagerDuty automatically adds a notification rule to users' profiles when the Google Calendar extension is enabled in the account. Users can edit this setting.

1. Navigate to User Icon My Profile and select the Notification Rules tab.
2. Under When I have an upcoming shift conflict, contact me via, click to edit or to remove the notification rule.
3. Make the required changes and click Save.

Shift Coverage Requests

All PagerDuty Advance users have a notification rule for when they receive a shift coverage request. Users can edit this notification rule (i.e., change the selected workspace), however it cannot be deleted.

1. Navigate to User Icon My Profile and select the Notification Rules tab.
2. Under When I'm sent a shift coverage request, contact me via, click .
3. Make the required changes and click Save.

FAQ

How many credits does the Shift Agent use?