Email is so 1996.
Webhooks are a killer feature for reporting, a form of push notification that sends alert information in a JSON-formatted HTTP action to a customer's HTTP receiver for logging and automation purposes. Meraki has supported webhooks alerts for quite some time now, but some webhooks receivers (HTTP receivers) require webhook payloads to conform to specific templates in order to be ingested.
What's new
So we're thrilled to announce that we have recently released to beta the added the ability to choose a payload template for each of your HTTP receivers (Network-wide > Alerts > HTTP receivers). We've started with support for two top collaboration platforms, Webex and Slack, and it means that you can now send Meraki dashboard alerts directly into your Webex spaces or Slack channels, and those alerts will be markdown-formatted to enable hyperlinks directly to the relevant parts of Meraki's dashboard. For example, organization name, network name, and device serial are all clickable links directly to those parts of the Meraki dashboard:
Changing the game
For Meraki and Webex or Slack customers, this is a game changer--you can now push infrastructure alerts directly into the collaboration spaces where your NOC, network admins or IT staff are communicating. That's cool. ❄ but what's cooler is that you can then leverage the bot features of those collaboration platforms and Meraki's dashboard APIs to take action in response to those alerts. ⛄✅
Especially with Webex bots, which support "virtual assistant" interfaces as we use in the API Demo Platform, customers can develop bots to present the members of that space with card interfaces that offer members of that space an interface to take direct action, based on the content of the alerts. For an example of one of these bot interfaces, check out our API Demo Platform forum post.
Configuration
Configuration is easy. If your organization is beta enabled, simply visit Network-wide > Alerts, and configure a new HTTP receiver and choose your template (you'll need the actual "incoming webhook" URL from your Webex or Slack space). Save the config, make sure your HTTP receiver is chosen as one of the alerts recipients, and you're done!
We can't wait to see what you build on this feature, and learn about your use cases!
What's next
A general availability date has not yet been announced, but we're looking forward to releasing this to GA soon! If you're already participating in the API beta, then you already have these features in your dashboard. But if you'd like to participate in the API beta, please reach out to your account team.
Good news - if you use the beta and select "Slack" you get the core message of the alert in Microsoft Teams.
Webhook Payload Template - Documentation
https://developer.cisco.com/meraki/webhooks/#!payload-templates
After using it for a week, I must say, that sometimes it's hard to see the changes from the alert data.
You might want to put "Alert Data" to the bottom and make it json formatted.
I know the text will get longer, but in the end it's more readable
Current Example (Switchport setting changed)
I've formatted the alert data to json (=> became : and nil became null ), made a pretty print on it and put it on the bottom with a json formatted code block
Yes the message gets really longer that way for settings changes or other messages with more date, but I think this is more readable.
Even without a pretty print, it's much easier to read.
