Dell AIOps Webhooks Integration with Slack

Introduction:

Webhooks are a powerful way to integrate Dell AIOps with your existing communication and collaboration tools. By connecting webhooks to platforms like Slack, you can receive real-time notifications about critical infrastructure events directly in your team's channels. This integration enables your operations team to stay informed, respond faster to issues, and reduce the time it takes to resolve problems.

Dell AIOps webhooks provide the flexibility to send customized notifications to any platform that supports incoming webhooks. With Slacks integration, you can format Slack Blocks that include relevant context about health issues, system status, and recommended actions. This means your team doesn't need to log into Dell AIOps to understand what's happening—the information comes to them.

In this guide, you'll learn how to configure a webhook that sends health issue notifications from Dell AIOps to Slack. By the end of this walkthrough, you'll be able to create custom notifications that keep your team informed and enable faster incident response.

Steps:

1. Create a new Slack application or modify an existing application using instructions 1-3 here : https://docs.slack.dev/messaging/sending-messages-using-incoming-webhooks/ - this will give you a URL with the format https://hooks.slack.com/services/T00000000/B00000000/PLACEHOLDER that will be needed for the configuration in Dell AIOps.
   1. Note: Before you can receive a URL, the administrator of that channel needs to grant you the access to have the app.

 

2. In Dell AIOps, select ‘Admin->Integrations->Webhooks->Add New Webhook’. For this example:

1. Select ‘Health Issue Change’ as the ‘Event Type’
2. Provide a ‘Name’ for this webhook.
3. Paste the URL from Slack as the ‘Payload URL’.
4. Provide a secret – not used for this example but this is a required field and can be any value in this case. The secret will be used to generate a signature for this webhook that some receiving applications require to verify the sender.
5. Select ‘No’ for Server Authentication; again this is not required for Slack integration

 

3. On the next screen, select which systems this webhook will be active for. If no policy is set, the webhook will be active for all systems.
4. In the ‘Payload’ screen, we can now configure the payload that will be sent to Slack in the event of a health issue change.

Variables and additional headers other than ‘Content-Type’  are not required for this example.  In the payload text entry box at bottom right, enter the following JSON :

 

{     "blocks": [         {             "type": "header",             "text": {                 "type": "plain_text",                 "text": "{{state}} Health Issue for {{system}} - System Health is {{#iflt system_current_score 95}}FAIR{{#iflt system_current_score 71}}POOR{{/iflt}}{{else}}GOOD{{/iflt}}"             }         },         {             "type": "divider"         },         {             "type": "section",             "text": {                 "text": "*Description:* {{ description }}",                 "type": "mrkdwn"             }         },         {             "type": "section",             "text": {                 "text": "*Resolution:* {{ resolution }}",                 "type": "mrkdwn"             }         },         {             "type": "section",             "fields": [                 {                     "type": "mrkdwn",                     "text": "*System:* {{ system }}"                 },                 {                     "type": "mrkdwn",                     "text": "*System Model:* {{ system_model }}"                 }             ]         },         {             "type": "section",             "fields": [                 {                     "type": "mrkdwn",                     "text": "*Current Health Score:* {{ system_current_score }}"                 },                 {                     "type": "mrkdwn",                     "text": "*Category:* {{ category }}"                 }             ]         },         {             "type": "section",             "fields": [                 {                     "type": "mrkdwn",                     "text": "*Impacted Object Name:* {{ impacted_object_name }}"                 },                 {                     "type": "mrkdwn",                     "text": "*Impacted Object Type:* {{ impacted_object_native_type }}"                 }             ]         },         {             "type": "section",             "text": {                 "type": "mrkdwn",                 "text": "<https://aiops.dell.com/ui/index.html#/proactivehealth|View issue>"             }         }     ] }

Within the Dell AIOps GitHub page, there is a JSON document of the above text that you can utilize.

 

This JSON utilises Slack Block Kit components (e.g. header, block) to format Dell AIOps data into a more readable, visually compelling message in Slack.  Reference to Slack Block Kit and available components can be found here : https://docs.slack.dev/reference/block-kit

 

The above JSON will generate a notification in Slack that looks like:

 

 

Within the JSON, we are utilising the {{ variable }} syntax to substitute values from the specific health issue change that triggered this webhook.  For example, the line  "text": "*System:* {{ system }}" instructs Slack to render a text field with the word System in bold which will be followed by the name of the system that generated the health issue change.

 

Additionally, this example makes use of one of the available “helper” functions (#iflt) to render a word indicating the health score status in the description header of the notification :

 

"text": "{{state}} Health Issue for {{system}} - System Health is {{#iflt system_current_score 95}}FAIR{{#iflt system_current_score 71}}POOR{{/iflt}}{{else}}GOOD{{/iflt}}"

 

This syntax defines some conditional logic that utilises the same system health status as the Dell AIOps UI, namely :

 

GOOD = 95-100, FAIR = 71-94, POOR = 0-70

 

Therefore, this syntax :

 

{{#iflt system_current_score 95}}FAIR{{#iflt system_current_score 71}}POOR{{/iflt}}{{else}}GOOD{{/iflt}}"

Equates to:

 

If the current system health score is less than 95, display the word FAIR.  Then, if the current system health score is less than 71, display the word POOR.  For any other condition (i.e. current system health score is > 95) display the word GOOD.

 

 

Health Score Severity

 

< 71	POOR
71 -- 94	FAIR
>= 95	GOOD

 

Full reference for the helper commands can be found here : https://developer.dell.com/apis/4138/versions/1.0/docs/01-Introduction.md

 

5. Clicking the ‘Test Payload’ button at bottom right will validate the payload syntax and highlight any errors that need correction before the webhook can be tested and saved.

 

6. On the ‘Test Webhook’ screen, the ‘Test Webhook’ button will send the configured payload with dummy values to the URL that was configured in Step 2. This allows validation and confirmation of both communication and expected format.  Once completed, the webhook can be saved.

 Attached is a link to the JSON file so that you can create this in your own environment. https://github.com/dell/dell-aiops/blob/main/webhook/Slack.json