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incident.io Zapier integrationAutomate incident.io with Zapier.

The incident.io Zapier integration gives you 1 trigger, 2 actions and 2 searches. That is enough to react when an incident gets declared, look up who is on call and open incidents from other tools, once you know what each step costs and where it stalls.

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Overview

What the incident.io Zapier integration actually does

incident.io is where your organisation declares, runs and closes incidents. Zapier is the layer that watches it for you: when an incident appears, a Zap (one automation, made of a starting event and the steps that follow) can look up the on-call rota or open an incident on its own.

Three results people build first. A paging lookup: New Incident starts the Zap and Find Users On-Call returns who holds the pager for a schedule, ready for whatever step you add next. Incidents opened from elsewhere: a form, a monitoring tool or a support desk feeds Create Incident, so a report never sits in someone's inbox. A schedule lookup: Get Schedule hands the details of one rota to any later step that needs them.

Now the part the app page skips. The only trigger checks on a timer, so it is not instant: on the free plan, an incident can wait up to 15 minutes before your Zap notices it. There is one way in (new incidents), nothing for an incident that changes severity or gets resolved. And past those five operations, the only door is API Request (Beta), which asks you to know the incident.io API.

If you are still weighing the tool itself, the Zapier review covers the platform as a whole, and n8n vs Zapier puts it next to a self-hostable option.

Vocabulary

Zapier vocabulary in one minute

Eight words come back on every line of this page. Here they are in plain English.

Zap
The automation you build: one event that starts it, then one or more steps that run each time that event happens.
Trigger
The event that starts the Zap. Once the Zap is on, Zapier sits and waits for it, here a newly declared incident.
Action
What the Zap does after it starts: the step that writes, sends or creates something for you, like opening an incident.
Task
The unit Zapier bills. One task is one action that completed successfully; your plan gives you a number of them.
Polling vs instant
A polling trigger is checked on a timer and keeps only what is new. An instant one is reported by the app the moment it happens.
Filter
A step that lets the Zap carry on only when what arrived meets your condition, and stops it quietly otherwise.
Search step
A step that looks up something that already exists, like an on-call list, so the next steps can use what it found.
Connection
Your incident.io account linked to Zapier once, then reused by every step of every Zap that touches incident.io.
Cost

What it really costs in tasks

Watching incident.io is free. Doing something is what counts.

  • Free plan100 tasks a month, unlimited Zaps
  • Free plan stepsOne trigger and one action
  • TriggerCosts no task
  • Premium appNo, works on the free plan

The trigger never uses a task, however often Zapier checks. Each action that succeeds counts once, so a Zap with two actions eats twice as much as a Zap with one, and a failed action is not billed. The free plan stops at two steps: one trigger, one action. Add a search like Find Users On-Call or a filter and the Zap becomes multi-step, which needs a paid plan. incident.io itself is not a premium app, so it runs on the free plan.

Connect

Connect incident.io to Zapier in three steps

  1. 01

    Open the Apps page

    In your Zapier account, open the Apps page and click + Add connection. Type incident.io in the search box of the dialog that appears, then pick it from the results.

  2. 02

    Sign in to incident.io

    Click Add connection. A new tab opens on incident.io: sign in with the account whose incidents, severities and schedules your Zaps should be able to reach.

  3. 03

    Grant access

    Grant Zapier access to that account. The connection is saved once, and every incident.io step you add later, in any Zap, can pick it without signing in again.

First Zap

Your first Zap: ping whoever is on call

GoalEach new incident looks up the people on call for your main rota and sends them a message in your team chat.

  1. 01

    Build: pick the trigger

    Start a new Zap, choose incident.io as the app and New Incident as the event, then select the connection you made earlier.

  2. 02

    Test the trigger

    Run the test. Zapier brings back the three most recent incidents of the connected account, so you build the next steps on a real one instead of an empty template.

  3. 03

    Add Find Users On-Call

    Add incident.io again and pick Find Users On-Call under SEARCH. Choose your schedule, then map a start and an end time. This search makes the Zap multi-step, so it needs a paid plan.

  4. 04

    Add the message

    Add your team chat as the last app and its message action. Map the incident name from the trigger and the names returned by the search into the text.

  5. 05

    Test, then publish

    Test each step once and read what came back. When the message lands with the right names, click Publish to switch the Zap on.

Triggers

The incident.io trigger

1 event starts a Zap when something happens in incident.io. Zapier checks for them at the interval your plan allows.

1

New Incident

Polling trigger

In Zapier“Triggers when a new incident is declared.”

Starts your Zap each time someone declares an incident in incident.io, and hands its details to every step after it. It is the only trigger the app offers, so every Zap that reacts to incident.io starts here.

How it fires
Zapier goes and looks at regular intervals, and how often depends on your plan: every 15 minutes on the free one.
When to use it
when a new incident should set off a follow-up that nobody has to remember, such as a rota lookup or a post in another tool.
Watch out
it only sees declarations, never a change of severity or a resolution, and Zapier remembers what it has already seen so the same incident does not start the Zap twice.
Actions

The incident.io actions

incident.io gives you 2 actions. For each one: what it does for you, when to reach for it, and what to watch out for.

1

Create Incident

Action

In Zapier“Creates a new incident.”

Opens a new incident in incident.io from whatever earlier step fed the Zap. You set the severity and who can see the incident, and you pass an idempotency key.

When to use it
when reports land in another tool, like a form or a support queue, and should become incidents without copy and paste.
Watch out
only one incident is created per idempotency key, so map something unique from the trigger or the second report gets swallowed.
2

API Request (Beta)

Action

In Zapier“This is an advanced action which makes a raw HTTP request that includes this integration's authentication.”

Sends a raw HTTP request to incident.io, reusing the connection you already made. You choose the method, the URL and what to send.

When to use it
when the operation you want is not among the other four and you can read the incident.io API documentation.
Watch out
the URL must point to a domain tied to incident.io, and with Stop on error set to No, the Zap carries on even when the app refuses the call.
Searches

The incident.io searches

2 search steps look for data that already exists in incident.io, so a later step can use it.

A search step reads what already exists and passes it on. In the editor, searches sit at the bottom of the Action event list, under SEARCH. Three settings decide what happens when the answer is not the one you expected.

1

Find Users On-Call

Search

In Zapier“Finds users who are on call for a specific schedule during a given time period.”

Returns the people on call for one schedule between a start time and an end time you give it, so a later step knows who to reach.

When to use it
right after New Incident, to hand the current pager holder to whatever comes next.
Watch out
the schedule, the start time and the end time are all required; leave one empty and the step will not run.
2

Get Schedule

Search

In Zapier“Get details about a specific schedule”

Fetches the details of a single schedule from its ID, ready to feed another step.

When to use it
when a later step needs facts about the rota itself rather than the names of the people on it.
Watch out
it asks for the schedule ID, so keep that ID at hand from incident.io before you build the step.

The three settings every search exposes

  1. Successful if no search results are found?
    Left on its default, a search that finds nothing stops the Zap there and the steps that needed it are skipped. Switch it on and the Zap carries on empty-handed.
  2. Create X if it doesn't exist yet?
    This box turns a search into a find-or-create. incident.io offers no such variant on Zapier, so you will not see it on these two searches.
  3. If multiple search results are found?
    Keep the first match (the default), stop the Zap, or hand every match to the next steps at once.
When it breaks

When an incident.io Zap breaks

Zapier links no help article to incident.io. What goes wrong comes from how Zapier itself works.

Four cases cover what you will meet first. None of them is specific to incident.io, all of them hit an incident Zap. When a run fails, the Zapier troubleshooting guide is the place to start.

  • Past incidents are never picked up

    A Zap only reacts to incidents declared after you publish it. Everything that already existed stays where it is, and moving that backlog is a separate job.

  • A Zap that sets itself off

    Feed a Zap that starts on New Incident into Create Incident and each run declares a new one, which starts the Zap again and burns through your tasks.

  • A burst of incidents gets held

    When the trigger suddenly returns a huge batch, after a migration or a bulk import, Zapier's flood protection can hold the Zap back instead of running it.

  • The delay is the plan, not a bug

    New Incident is checked on a timer: up to 15 minutes on the free plan. A Zap that looks slow is often just waiting for its next check.
Need help

Need help automating incident.io with Zapier?

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FAQ

incident.io Zapier integration: questions people ask

01Is the incident.io Zapier integration free?
Yes, as long as the Zap stays at two steps. incident.io is not a premium app, so it works on the free plan, which gives 100 tasks a month and unlimited Zaps. The catch is the shape: the free plan allows one trigger and one action. A Zap that adds Find Users On-Call or a filter becomes multi-step, and multi-step Zaps need a paid plan. So New Incident followed by a single action is free; New Incident followed by a search and an action is not.
02How many tasks does an incident.io Zap use?
One per action that succeeds, and nothing else. The New Incident trigger costs no task, however often Zapier checks incident.io for new incidents. If your Zap runs Create Incident once, that is one task. If it runs two actions, that is two tasks per incident. An action that fails is not counted against your plan. Plan for the busy days: every declared incident that reaches an action takes its share of the monthly count.
03Does incident.io trigger Zapier in real time?
No. New Incident is a polling trigger: Zapier asks incident.io for new incidents at a fixed interval and keeps only the ones it has not seen. That interval depends on the plan: 15 minutes on Free, 2 on Professional, 1 on Team and Enterprise. On paid plans you can also run a check by hand from the editor. If minutes matter during an incident, the free plan is the wrong fit for this trigger.
04What does it take to connect incident.io to Zapier?
An incident.io account, plus access to whatever the Zap should touch. You add the connection from the Apps page of Zapier with + Add connection, sign in to incident.io in the tab that opens, then grant access. If the account cannot see a schedule or a severity, the steps that need them cannot be filled. Once saved, the connection is reused by every incident.io step in every Zap, so the sign-in happens only once. Create Incident also asks for a severity and a visibility setting, so the account must see the severities your organisation uses.
05Why does Create Incident skip a second report?
Because it reused an idempotency key. Create Incident requires that key, and incident.io creates only one incident per key. If you type a fixed value, or map a field that repeats from one run to the next, every report after the first one lands on the same key and nothing new appears. Map something unique to each run from the trigger step, and test with two different records before you publish.
06What if an incident.io operation is missing from the list?
Use API Request (Beta). It sends a raw HTTP request to incident.io with the connection you already set up, so you can reach parts of the API that the five listed operations do not cover. You pick the method, write the URL and map the data. It is an advanced step: keep the incident.io API documentation open next to it, and the URL must point to a domain tied to incident.io.
07Zapier, Make or n8n for incident.io?
Decide on what you can check rather than on a ranking. On Zapier, incident.io offers one polling trigger, two actions and two searches, and the free plan stops at two steps. So ask three questions: do the listed operations cover your flow, is a check every few minutes fast enough during an incident, and how many actions will each incident run. Then compare the same three answers in any other tool you consider.
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