Mobile alerting with tracking & escalation for Node-RED
Why SIGNL4
Node-RED is a flow-based development tool for visual programming for wiring together hardware devices, API’s, and online services with IoT applications. Node-RED provides a web browser-based flow editor, which can be used to create JavaScript functions. It is shipped with some variants of Raspbian, the operating system of Raspberry Pi. Integrating SIGNL4 with Node-RED can enhance your daily operations with an extension to your mobile team in the field or on the shop floor.
How it Works
All it takes to pair Node-RED and SIGNL4 is a node that implements a webhook and encapsulates SIGNL4 alerting capabilities.
Integration Capabilities
- Service engineers alerted via mobile push, text and voice
- Staff can acknowledge and take ownership for critical events that occur
- Alerts are escalated in case of no response
- ChatOps is hosted within alerts to effectively address individual problems
- Alert on critical device states
- Two-way integration to interact or set the device state
- On-call scheduling to alert the right people at the right time
Scenarios
- Industrial IoT
- Industry 4.0
- IoT Service Alerting
- IoT Device Management
- IT Operations
- Manufacturing, Utility, Oil and Gas, Agriculture, etc.
Tickets and Incidents in Node-red are retrieved via the SIGNL4 app
Event categorization, routing and automated delivery
Persistent Notifications by push, text and voice call with Tracking, Escalation and Confirmation to Staff on Duty
HOW TO INTEGRATE
Gathering events from IoT devices and sending team alerts in case of critical incidents is a rather vast field. It can involve simple prototypes using a Raspberry Pi and can work up to industrial IoT scenarios, machine data or distributed systems in the field, and even IT operations.
SIGNL4 is a mobile alert notification app for powerful alerting, alert management and for mobile assignment of work items. Get the app at https://www.signl4.com.
Node-RED offers an easy-to-use workflow designer. The integration with SIGNL4 is straightforward. In the following we explain a simple IT monitoring case. We automatically ping a server in certain intervals and send an alert via SIGNL4 in case a ping fails.
Prerequisites
A SIGNL4 account
Node-RED (download at https://nodered.org or use it directly on your Raspberry Pi if available)
In Node-RED you can create a workflow as follows:
Ping Server (ping) – Specify the server you want to monitor (ping). For testing purposed you can specify a server that does not exist so the ping will fail.
Ping Failed (switch) – This switch checks if the ping failed. If so it will proceed to the next node.
Alert Text (function)
Assemble the SIGNL4 alert in JSON format.
We use the following script:
msg.payload = “{‘Subjset’: ‘Ping failed.’, ‘Server’: ‘mycluser.somecloud’}”;
return msg;
Debug (debug) – Just a helper to see the output in the debug view.
SIGNL4 Alert (http request) – This HTTP request will send the alert data to the SIGNL4 webhook. You need to specify your SIGNL4 webhook address including team secret here.
You can find the example code for importing at GitHub in the file “SIGNL4-Alert-Node-Red.txt”.
Test It
Now you can test your workflow by clicking Deploy. It will run immediately and if the ping fails you will receive the alert in your SIGNL4 app.
Update: SIGNL4 Node for Node-RED
There is a dedicated Node available for Node-RED now: https://flows.nodered.org/node/node-red-contrib-signl4
ALERT OPTIMIZATION
SIGNL4 can further increase the visibility of alerts through its Signals and Services section. Augmenting the color and icon of alerts will provide more relevant information at a glance without having to open the alert.
Change alert color and override title + text
Override text, colors and titles are triggered by keywords set within the mobile app.