---
description: Raise PagerDuty incidents from Report URI Watch alerts using PagerDuty's email integration.
---

# PagerDuty

PagerDuty can open an incident from an email, and each service can be given its own integration address. That makes email the practical route from a Watch alert to an on-call page - PagerDuty's Events API authenticates with a routing key inside a fixed payload shape we do not produce, so the webhook is not the way in.

The same pattern applies to any tool with an inbound email address: ServiceNow inbound email actions, a Jira mail handler, a Zendesk support address.

## Creating the integration address

1. In PagerDuty, go to **Services > Service Directory** and select the service that should be paged.
2. Open the **Integrations** tab and add an **Email** integration.
3. Copy the generated integration email address.

By default PagerDuty opens a new incident for every email received at that address. **Email Filters** can check the subject, body and from address against regex patterns if you want to narrow that, and Email Management Rules give finer routing.

## Getting alerts to that address

Watch product email alerts are on by default, controlled by the **Send email alerts** toggle in each watcher's Config modal, and they are sent to your account's notification address.

There is currently no field in Report URI for sending alerts to a different address, so route them at your mail provider - either forward messages from Report URI to the PagerDuty integration address, or make the account's notification address a distribution list that includes it.

Filter on the sender. Watch alerts arrive from a per-product address at our domain, and the subject is of the form `New <product> <items> Detected`, so a rule matching those is precise enough to avoid paging on unrelated mail.

## Things to watch for

- **Every email opens an incident by default.** A watcher with a threshold of `1` on a busy site can page repeatedly. Raise the watcher's alert threshold, add a PagerDuty email filter, or both.
- Email is not instant. It is right for "somebody should look at this", not for a hard latency target.
- Forwarding rules are easy to set and easy to forget. If they are removed or the mailbox changes, alerts stop with nothing in Report URI to indicate it - so include the path in whatever you use to review alerting.
- Turning email alerts off for a watcher stops the page too, since it is the same feed.

## A note on the webhook route

PagerDuty's Events API v2 takes its routing key in the request body rather than a header, and our payload shape is fixed, so we cannot populate it. Sending the webhook through a small relay that rewrites the body into PagerDuty's format is possible - see [Security Operations](/security-operations/) - but for most teams the email integration reaches the same outcome without hosting anything.

## Official documentation

[PagerDuty - Email Integration Guide](https://support.pagerduty.com/main/docs/email-integration-guide)

## Start Monitoring with Report URI

**Already using us?** Add an Email integration to your PagerDuty service, then route your alert emails to it.

**New to Report URI?** Watch products are available on Business plans and higher.

[Start your free trial](https://report-uri.com/register/?plan=starter2025)