Google Chat steps

Flow Designer has built-in steps to help you integrate Google Chat into your event management and incident response flows.

The following steps are available:

  • Post Simple Message: send a simple text message that appears inline like any other chat message.
  • Post Card Message: display a card in chat with sections, a title, subtitles, images, and other widgets.


In the example above, the Incident Initiation trigger initiates the flow, which then creates an incident in xMatters and posts a card message to the configured Google Chat space, including information about the incident and the xMatters alert. If the incident's status is updated to Resolved, the flow then posts a simple message update to the same Google Chat space with details about the status change.

To use the Post Simple Message and Post Card Message steps, you need to set up an incoming webhook connector in your Google Chat space, then create an endpoint that uses the unique URL generated when you set up the webhook connector. For more information, see Google’s guide on Using incoming webhooks.

  1. To add a Google step to your flow, go to the Apps panel in the palette, expand the Google section, and drag the step onto the canvas.
  2. Connect the step to the previous step in the flow so you have access to the properties and outputs of previous steps when configuring this step's inputs.
  3. Double-click the step to edit it, and use the Setup tab to configure the inputs. You can use plain text and input variables (or both). See the sections below for detailed information on the inputs for the step.
  4. On the Endpoint tab, click Add Endpoint.
  5. Type a Name to reference the endpoint from within the step.
  6. Paste the webhook URL from your Google Chat space into the Base URL field.
  7. Click Save.

Post Simple Message

Use the Post Simple Message step to automatically send a simple text message to a Google Chat space. Map outputs from previous steps to populate the message.

Inputs

Inputs with an asterisk* are required.

Label

 Description
Message* Content of the message to post to Google Chat in simple text message formatting.

Post Card Message

Use the Post Card Message step to automatically send a new message to a Google Chat space using text, constants, and the outputs from previous steps to populate the inputs.

Inputs

Inputs with an asterisk* are required.

Label

 Description
Card Sections* A valid JSON array representing different sections within the card. Use the template provided, or see the Google Chat API documentation for more information on formatting card messages.
Title Title displayed in the card header.
Subtitle Short description displayed in the card header.
Image URL Image displayed in the card header. Images are displayed as a square thumbnail.