Google Cloud Operations Suite

Google Cloud Operations Suite delivers software for monitoring and managing networks and systems. When events meet predetermined criteria, this integration with xMatters relays critical insight data to the correct people and systems to help them coordinate and resolve incidents faster.

This workflow lets you send actionable alerts to on-call resources when xMatters gets a signal from Google Cloud Operations. 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 Google Cloud Operations, it sends a JSON-formatted webhook to xMatters, based on the user-defined alert rules. A Google Cloud Incidents 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 Google Cloud Operations Suite tile.
  2. On the Set up the Workflow tab, give the workflow a name that identifies its purpose (this must be unique in your instance), add an optional description, and set the default incident type (if applicable). Any built-in Initiate Incident steps in the workflow will automatically be set to the selected incident type.
    • You can edit these later, if needed.

  3. Click Next to set up the connection.
  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 Google Cloud Operations Suite.
    • 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. Choose the authentication method. A trigger URL is generated based on the selected authentication method.

Configure Google Cloud to send requests to the trigger URL

To have Google send alerts to the flow trigger, you need to enter the trigger URL when you create a notification webhook.

  1. In Google Cloud's operations suite, go to Monitoring > Alerting.
  2. Click Edit Notification Channels.
  3. In the Webhooks section, click Add New.
  4. Paste the URL you copied from xMatters in the Endpoint URL field and give your webhook a name.
    • If you want to use basic authentication, select the check box and enter the web login and password of an xMatters user.
  5. Add the target names of any recipients you want xMatters to notify when the alert fires.
    • 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 end of 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 end of the URL.
    • You must URL-encode any special characters or spaces in the target names.
  6. Click Test Connection to send a test message to xMatters.
    • This won't cause any notifications to be sent, but you can check the Activity Stream to see if the message came through.
  7. After you test the connection, click Save.
  8. Open the alerting policy that you want to send alerts to xMatters (or create a new one).
  9. Click Add Notification Channel.
  10. In Who should be notified?, select the webhook you created as the notification channel.
    • Make sure to select the Notify on incident resolution check box if you want xMatters to automatically terminate events related to the resolved incident.
  11. Click Add.

You're ready to use the webhook to trigger automated flows, including steps such as sending alerts and initiating incidents, though we always recommend testing before putting things into use.

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 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 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.

The person responding to the notification has the following response options:

  • Acknowledge: Acknowledges the notifications and stops escalations.
  • Escalate: Immediately escalates the alert to the next on-call resolver in a targeted group.
  • Close: Ends the xMattersalert and stops notifying all targeted recipients.
  • Initiate Incident: Initiates an incident 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 version

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.

Google Cloud Operations Suite delivers software for monitoring and managing networks and systems. When alerts meet predetermined criteria, this integration with xMatters relays critical insight data to the correct people and systems to help them coordinate and resolve incidents faster.

Do more with this integration

Incorporate this integration into your orchestrated incident resolution workflows with Flow Designer. After you create a configuration, the Flows tab appears. From there, you can build your flows — add new response options, connect to other apps, or even create new xMatters alerts based on activities in the flow — enriching the information injected by this integration along the way.

Got questions about integrating with Google Operations Suite? Take a live, online workshop led by one of our xPerts.

Get started with Google Cloud Operations Suite

To install this integration in xMatters, simply go to Workflow Templates on the Workflows tab and start typing the name of the integration you're looking for to filter the list. Once you find it, click its tile then click Next to get to the configuration screen.

How to set up this integration

After you give your configuration a name and description, type a name to use when sending alerts (so you can easily tell which configuration or integration the alerts are from).

Set the priority you want to assign to alerts generated by this configuration. If you want to assign different priorities to different types of incidents coming from Google Cloud Operations Suite, create a configuration for each type of alert.

Choose what xMatters should do when it receives an incident with a 'closed' state:

  • Terminate alerts for closed incidents: This terminates an existing alert in xMatters when the incident is closed in Google Cloud Operations Suite.
  • Ignore all closed incidents: xMatters ignores incidents coming from Google Cloud Operations Suite with a closed state. No existing alerts are terminated and no new alert is created.

Select the Include documentation in notifications check box if you want to include the information in the Documentation section of the Alerting Policy in the notifications sent by xMatters.

Add all of the users and groups you want to be notified (see Manage groups and Manage users for information on setting up groups and users).

After you save the configuration, xMatters displays the URL that you use for the webhook in Google Cloud Operations Suite — just click Copy and you're ready to head over to Google Cloud Operations Suite.

  1. In Google Cloud Operations Suite, go to Monitoring > Alerting.
  2. Click Edit Notification Channels.
  3. In the Webhooks section, click Add New.
  4. Paste the URL you copied from xMatters in the Endpoint URL field and give your webhook a name.

  1. Click Test Connection.
    • This sends a test message to xMatters – this doesn't cause any notifications to be sent, but you can check the Activity Stream to see if the message came through.
  2. After you test the connection, click Save.
  3.  Open the alerting policy that you want to send alerts to xMatters (or create a new one).
    • If you add information to the Documentation section, this is sent to xMatters to include in the notification sent to resolvers if you selected the Include documentation in notifications check box in the integration setup.
  4. Click Add Notification Channel.
  5. Set the type to Webhook with Token Authentication, and then select the webhook you created as the notification channel.

  1. Click Add.

Your integration is now complete!

Use your integration

When Alert Policy thresholds are breached, the integration sends a notification to xMatters, which notifies the appropriate users or on-call resources on their preferred device.

  1. Create a condition that triggers the Alerting Policy.
  2. An alert is created in xMatters and a notification is sent to the recipients you set up in the configuration.
  3. Select a response option. The xMatters alert is updated, along with any comments added.

After you send the response, you're given the option to open up the incident in Google Cloud Operations Suite.

Selecting a response option only updates the alert in xMatters. Google Cloud Operations Suite doesn't yet give us the option of changing the state of the incident.

Extending your integration

Looking to do more with xMatters and Google Cloud Operations Suite? If you want to tailor the settings and notifications for the integration, you can convert it to a custom workflow.