# Using On-call Assistant for incidents
Cortex’s On-call Assistant leverages the [PagerDuty integration](/ingesting-data-into-cortex/integrations/pagerduty.md) to automatically surface the most vital information about entity health and metadata when an incident is triggered. On-call Assistant notifies the user(s) responsible for an incident via Slack, including information about the affected entity, recent deployments, ownership, and links to get more details, including dependencies, runbooks, and logs.
On-call Assistant helps users respond to incidents in real time, simplifying the incident response process and helping to reduce MTTR. It can also drive adoption and engagement through links to the catalogs and Scorecards.
## How On-call Assistant works
### Notifications
When an incident is triggered in PagerDuty, On-call Assistant will notify relevant users via [Slack](/ingesting-data-into-cortex/integrations/slack.md). This alert will include information about the affected entity, deploy details, and ownership information so an on-call team member can reach out to other relevant parties about the incident.
Developers can access entity information that is already in Cortex directly from the Slack notification to quickly resolve issues. On-call Assistant provides a direct link to view the alert in PagerDuty, so you can also quickly access the incident from its source.
#### View runbooks and other links
#### View dependencies
## Enabling On-call Assistant
### Prerequisites
* You must have the [PagerDuty integration](/ingesting-data-into-cortex/integrations/pagerduty.md) configured.
* You must create an [API key](https://support.pagerduty.com/main/docs/api-access-keys#rest-api-keys) in PagerDuty with the `Write` permission.
* If you create an API key with `Read-only` permissions, you will also need to configure a webhook to get the On-call Assistant working.
### Enable On-call Assistant in Cortex
To enable, navigate to [**Settings > PagerDuty**](https://app.getcortexapp.com/admin/settings/pagerduty) and toggle on **Enable On-call Assistant**.
If you added PagerDuty API key with `Write` permissions, enabling the On-Call Assistant will create a webhook subscription in PagerDuty, allowing Cortex to receive events when incidents are triggered, escalated, or unacknowledged.
#### Configure a webhook for read-only API keys
If you added PagerDuty API key with `Read-only` permissions, you must also configure a webhook subscription.
1. In Cortex, on the [PagerDuty settings page](https://app.getcortexapp.com/admin/settings/pagerduty), click **Configure webhook**.\
2. Copy the webhook URL. You will need this in the next steps.
3. In PagerDuty, add a new webhook.
* Paste the Cortex webhook URL into the **Webhook URL** field.
* Choose `Account` for **scope type**.
* Select only the following in Event Subscription:
* `incident.escalated`
* `incident.reopened`
* `incident.triggered`
* `incident.unacknowledged`
4. A secret will be generated. Copy the secret. You will need it in the next step.
5. Navigate back to the browser window where your Cortex instance is open. In the Webhook configuration **Secret** field, enter the secret that you generated in PagerDuty.\
6. Click **Save** at the bottom of the side panel.
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