Using external services to distribute alerts
Email remains one of the primary notification methods, with SMS, push notifications, and team messaging platforms often used alongside it. However, email is not always the fastest or most convenient way to react to an incident, especially on mobile devices or in team workflows. This is why it often makes sense to distribute the same alert through several delivery methods at once.
IPNetwork alerts can consist of many simpler notification actions (named “simple actions” in the user interface). By interacting with external messaging services, it is possible to cover all possible means to deliver an important alert to multiple destinations, all within the same IPNetwork alert.
In the below list, several cases of such a notification are mentioned. Some of them may require payment (and are mentioned as such).
SMS (via Twilio)
SMS (Short Message Service) is one of most popular means of notification on mobile devices. By default, most mobile operators provide so called email to SMS gateway, a special type of SMS address that forwards all incoming email as SMS to target recipient. IPNetwork uses “SMS over email” simple actions to send notifications via such gateways.
However, many “email to SMS” services are prone to being abused by spammers (since the structure of email address is usually obvious), thus not every mobile operator provide that. In such a case, network services allowing sending SMS can be used (most of these services are paid-for; those that can be used for free are less reliable and usually impose severe limits on amount of outbound SMS messages).
We provide an article on sending SMS notifications by means of Twilio service. In practice, this integration is implemented through script-based simple actions, and it is best used selectively for urgent alerts because third-party SMS delivery may incur additional cost.
Amazon Simple Notification Service
Amazon Web Services provides Simple Notification Service (SNS), a pub/sub messaging service capable of delivering messages to multiple subscriber types. Since subscribers can include HTTP(S) endpoints, AWS Lambda functions, queues, e-mail, SMS, and mobile push targets, it allows flexible reactions to monitoring events.
For example, a monitoring event indicating failure of an AWS-hosted service can trigger restoring the service from backup or a similar maintenance task.
For your convenience, we have a sample instruction on how to send alert notification via Amazon SNS.
Note: SNS is capable of sending push notifications and SMS messages, as well – please refer to corresponding pricing info on the SNS site.
Slack
Slack, a multi-platform collaborative service, is known since 2013. Since it’s widely used in business processes, it’s a natural target for sending monitoring notifications. One doesn’t have to use paid-for Slack subscription to post monitoring events, thus it can increase awareness of whatever problem may happen to the assets.
We provide detailed step-by-step instructions on sending alert notifications to a Slack channel.
In many cases, Slack and Microsoft Teams are the most straightforward examples of using the “Send HTTP(S) request” simple action for team-wide incident visibility.
Telegram
Telegram platform, known since 2013, is a set of multi-platform messaging services (including text messages, voice calls and video posts). It’s lightweight and can be considered secure enough for most communication types. Since 2015 Telegram platform support bots, which made it possible to automate sending messages to Telegram groups.
We offer a simple step-by-step instructions set on posting alert notifications to Telegram group.
Other platforms
Our knowledge base contains integration instructions for current platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Telegram, as well as a few older integrations kept for archive purposes. In particular, HipChat and Stride documentation is preserved mainly for historical reference, while newer integrations are generally built around scripts or the “Send HTTP(S) request” simple action. If you use another messaging or incident-management platform, please let us know — we will be glad to consider adding corresponding instructions.
Questions? Comments? Feel free to leave us comments by contacting us directly.