N-central Integration Guide

Pointers

• The integration is between a TaskCall service and N-central.
• Incidents will be automatically acknowledged in TaskCall as they are acknowledged in N-central.
• Incidents will automatically resolve in TaskCall when alerts normalize.
• This integration only allows alerts to be received in TaskCall from N-central.

In TaskCall

1. Go to Configurations > Integrations and click New Integration.
2. Select the N-central integration.
3. Give the integration a name and configure how incidents will be created. Only the Default Service field is required. The rest are optional.
4. Incidents (Optional)
   1. TaskCall automatically maps incoming payloads with internal attributes to create incidents. However, this can be customized in the Incidents tab. Constant values can be included alongside placeholders to dictate which attributes should map to the Incident Title, Description, Tags, Snapshots and Vendor URL. To insert a placeholder use double curly braces.
      
      
      
      For example, if you enter {{ alert.title }} in the Incident Title field, TaskCall will look for an attribute called "title" nested inside another attribute called "alert" in the incoming payload. If the nested attribute exists, its corresponding value will be pulled from the payload and inserted. If the nested attribute does not resolve successfully, TaskCall will fall back to the default mapping.
      
      If you are unsure, please leave the fields empty. TaskCall will use the default mapping to create the incident for you.
   2. Select the Urgency level the incident should be created at.
   3. Select the option to Group similar alerts together if you would like follow up triggers from the same alert source to be grouped into the same incident. If you leave this option unchecked, then a new incident will be created for every trigger. (This behavior is specific to new triggers; not updates to an alert.)
   4. Click Next to move on to the Services tab.
5. Services (Required)
   1. Select the Default Service incidents should be sent to. To route incidents to different services instead, set Map With Attribute to the attribute to route by using a placeholder. Then, map each value it can take to the service that should receive it.
      
      For example, to route by a region attribute sent in the payload, set Map With Attribute to {{ region }}, then map US to one service and EU to another, and so on.
      
      
   2. Click Next to move on to the Authorization tab.
6. Authorization (Optional)
   1. The Authorization tab allows a Bearer Token and an IP Allowlist be added if you would like to restrict who is able to send alerts to this integration. If you are unsure, this can be skipped.
7. Once done, click Save.
8. Copy the Integration Url that is issued for the integration. This will be used to set up the notification in N-central.

In N-central

1. First, you will need to set up a HTTP notification endpoint for a user with the Intergration Url provided by TaskCall.
   1. Go to Administration > User Management > Users. Select the user who you would like to set up the notification method for. You can select an existing user or create a new user for the purpose of sending alerts to TaskCall.
   2. Navigate to User Details > Notification Method. Click the Add dropdown and select Third Party Integration - HTTP.
   3. Give it a description and paste the Integration Url you copied over from TaskCall in the Target URL.
   4. Ensure the message type and acknowledgement message types are set to HTTP - XML. Click Save when you are done.
   
   
   
   
   
2. Next, you will need to configure the templates that will be used to send notifications to the notification endpoint set up above. This is important because TaskCall expects certain fields from N-central and may not be able to create incidents successfully if they are not included in the XML request.
   1. Go to Administration > Defaults > Notification Templates.
      
      
      
      
   2. Move over to the Notification Acknowledgement tab. Scroll down to the HTTP Message Template section and paste the following:
      
      
      
         {{ActiveNotificationTriggerID}}
         {{CustomerName}}
         {{DeviceName}}
         {{DeviceURI}}
         {{ExternalCustomerID}}
         {{AffectedService}}
         {{TaskIdent}}
         {{NcentralURI}}
         {{QualitativeOldState}}
         {{QualitativeNewState}}
         {{TimeOfStateChange}}
         {{ProbeURI}}
         {{QuantitativeNewState()}}
         {{ServiceOrganizationName}}
         {{TimeOfNotification}}
         {{AcknowledgementTime}}
         {{AcknowledgementUser}}
         {{AcknowledgementNote}}
      
      
      
      
      
   3. Do the same for the Return to Normal notification template.
3. Lastly, configure the trigger types that will send notifications to the TaskCall endpoint.
   1. Go to Configuration > Monitoring > Notifications. Select the trigger for which you want to configure the notification for.
   2. From the Profile Details tab, select the user you set up the HTTP XML notification endpoint for as the recipient.
      
      
      
      
   3. From the Trigger Details tab, select the trigger type again and check the Notify on return to Normal option. This will ensure that resolution notifications are also sent to TaskCall.
      
      
      
      
   4. Once you are done, click Ok.
4. That's it! Your N-central intergation is ready to send alerts to TaskCall.

Send Test Alerts

You can test if the integration is working correctly by setting a device to fail temporarily.

1. Go to All Devices. Select a device.
2. Move to the Montioring tab and select a check.
3. Navigate to the Thresholds tab, and set packet loss to Reversed. This will cause the check to fail and throw an alert for this device and subsequently an incident will be created in TaskCall if the integration was configured correctly. Setting the packet loss to Normal would cause the device to return to its normal state.