BigPanda

BigPanda is a data science platform that helps correlate IT alerts across multiple monitoring tools, leveraging AIOps to scan for service degradations across your systems. Combined with xMatters, you can notify on-call resolvers and give them the information they need to start working on the issue.

This workflow lets you send actionable alerts to on-call resources when xMatters gets a signal from BigPanda. Responders can initiate an incident with the press of a button, or you can build on the flow to perform automated resolution tasks.

How it works

When an alert is generated in BigPanda, it sends a JSON-formatted webhook to xMatters, based on the user-defined alert rules. A BigPanda trigger in xMatters parses the webhook and initiates a flow. The webhook includes essential alert data you can use to enrich notifications to users or when building automated tasks.

Install the workflow

The following instructions describe how to install the workflow through the xMatters one-click installation process. If you already installed the previous, built-in version of the integration, you can find instructions here.

  1. Go to the Workflow Templates page and click the BigPanda tile.
  2. On the Set up the Workflow tab, give the workflow a name (this must be unique in your instance) and add an optional description.
    • You can edit these later, if needed.Click Next to set up the connection.

  3. Click Next.
  4. Choose the authentication method. A trigger URL is generated based on the selected authentication method.
  5. Copy the trigger URL — you’ll use this to configure the webhook in BigPanda.
    • The trigger URL includes the recipients parameter, which specifies who should be notified. By default, this parameter is set to notify you (the logged in user), but you can set it to target any user or group you want.

  6. Send a test signal to the trigger URL to test the connection.
  7. Click Open Workflow to view and customize the workflow, or Close to return to the Workflows page.

Configure BigPanda to send requests to the trigger URL

To have BigPanda send alerts to the flow trigger, you need to configure a webhook and set it to use the trigger URL. 

Set recipients in the trigger URL

The trigger expects the recipients in the trigger URL. When you copy the URL from xMatters, it includes the recipients parameter: recipients=<yourname>. Of course, you don’t want to receive all the alerts.

To change the recipients for alerts from this webhook, swap out your name for the people or groups you want to target.

  • For URL authentication, use an ampersand to attach recipients. For example, if you want to notify Emma Pearson and the on-call members in the group responsible for the Antares service, you'd add &recipients=epearson,antares to the URL.
  • For other authentication types, use a question mark to attach recipients. For example, if you want to notify Barry Gull and the on-call members in the group responsible for the Cassiopeia service, you'd add ?recipients=bgull,cassiopeia to the URL.

Remember to URL-encode any special characters in your group names.

We recommend using groups so you can take advantage of the xMatters group features — rotations, escalations, and absences — to reach the right on-call people to jump on an issue.

How to use the workflow

When an alert rule you’ve set to use the action group fires, it sends a signal to xMatters, which creates an alert and notifies the individual or the on-call members of the groups you set as recipients in the webhook URL.

When a condition you've set fires, it sends a signal to xMatters, which creates an alert and notifies the individual or the on-call members of the people or groups you set as recipients in the webhook URL. When the trigger receives a signal saying the issue is resolved, it automatically terminates related alerts in xMatters.

Next Steps

Now that you've installed the workflow, you can use it as-is, or customize it to suit your needs better. Here are some examples of things you can add to the workflow to customize it:

Previous versions

While the previous, built-in version of this integration is no longer available, the instructions for it are included below for anyone who has it installed in their system already.