Alertus Desktop Notifications

Alertus Technologies provides unified mass notification across several different platforms including outdoor speakers, beacons and, relevant here, desktops. This integration to the Alertus platform provides xMatters a way to make limited desktop notifications.

Note: This integration does not use Alertus as a "device" in xMatters and instead will target a group or organizational unit in Alertus.

Pre-Requisites

• Alertus server
• xMatters account - If you don't have one, get one!

Files

• Alertus.js

Installation

Alertus

Verify the Group names match the groups in xMatters and the message template is as desired. Note the Alert Pofile ID you wish to use.

xMatters

1. Log in to your xMatters instance as a user with the Developer role (or anyone with access to the target communication plan). On the Developer tab, click Edit > Integration Builder for the target communication plan.

2. Click 'Edit Endpoints', and then click Add Endpoint to add an endpoint for Alertus; fill out the following details:

   Item	Selection
   Name	Alertus
   Base URL	alertus host name and port
   Authorization	Basic
   Username	Username xMatters will authenitcate with
   Password	The password xMatters will authenticate with

3. Click Save and Close.

4. Click Save Changes and Close.

5. Expand the Shared libraries section (if necessary) and click the + Add button

6. Update the name at the top from My Shared Library to Alertus, then paste in the contents of the Alertus.js file and hit Save.

Testing

Initiate the call to Alertus. Generally the code will be fired from the Outbound Integration Event Status script. A successfull call to Alertus will return an ID:

Executing outbound integration for xMatters event ID: 3666002
> POST http://alertus.server.com/alertusmw/services/rest/activation/custom HTTP/1.1
> Accept: text/plain, application/json, application/*+json, */*
> User-Agent: Xerus (EndpointClient)
> Content-Type: application/com.alertus-v1.0+json; charset=UTF-8
> X-Trace: 8405ed28-85a3-49a0-be8b-2e54ee35d048,c7ded404-489b-4867-bd25-22a27d0ce28b
> Content-Length: 191
{
  "addressMode": "Group",
  "alertProfileId": 1,
  "clientName": "xMatters IB",
  "clientVersion": "1.0",
  "durationSeconds": 300,
  "groupNameRecipients": [
    "Facilities North"
  ],
  "sender": "xMatters",
  "text": "This is my text"
}

< HTTP/1.1 200 200
< Date: Mon, 22 May 2017 21:20:49 GMT
< Server: Apache
< X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
< X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
< X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
< Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=100
< Connection: Keep-Alive
< Transfer-Encoding: chunked
< Content-Type: application/json;charset=UTF-8
3023

If the recipients don't exist, the call will fail with a funny looking message:

Executing outbound integration for xMatters event ID: 3666001
> POST http://sensor.alertus.com/alertusmw/services/rest/activation/custom HTTP/1.1
> Accept: text/plain, application/json, application/*+json, */*
> User-Agent: Xerus (EndpointClient)
> Content-Type: application/com.alertus-v1.0+json; charset=UTF-8
> X-Trace: e948cdaf-148c-46c7-855b-75a7169480a8,135b490d-1f4d-4906-ae49-49b982c348bb
> Content-Length: 220
{
  "addressMode": "Group",
  "alertProfileId": 1,
  "clientName": "xMatters IB",
  "clientVersion": "1.0",
  "durationSeconds": 300,
  "groupNameRecipients": [
    "THIS GROUP DOES NOT EXIST"
  ],
  "sender": "xMatters",
  "text": "This is my text"
}

< HTTP/1.1 400 400
< Date: Mon, 22 May 2017 21:18:03 GMT
< Server: Apache
< X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
< X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
< X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
< Connection: close
< Transfer-Encoding: chunked
< Content-Type: application/json;charset=UTF-8
{
  "data": null,
  "errorCode": 400,
  "message": "Server was unable to process invalid custom alert: AlertusValidationException: The list of Address Mode Recipients is either empty or null"
}

Troubleshooting

The activity stream in xMatters will be the best place to check for any errors.