(Deprecated) Outcoming WebHooks
Deprecated!
Throughout Summer’23 we plan to make Outcoming WebHooks obsolete and substitute it with full-fledged Release Automation Explained. Existing hooks will keep on operating. At some point we will remove ability to create new hooks / clone existing. And after decent graceful period we will fully deprecate old WebHooks functionality.
Topics
Overview
Webhooks are aimed to integrate the Release Management app with other software in your organization to create a single and integrated workspace. Typical use cases are the following:
Sending notifications. (for instance to Slack, Teams ad etc.)
Trigger actions in your CI/CD server (for instance trigger build or deployment ). As a result, there is no need to educate all members of your team on how to use CI/CD tools and create separate accounts for them. It could be orchestrated from Release Management App.
Execute some actions on the same Jira instance (for instance, create a separate Jira issue for integration testing, compliance approval etc). This will open a lot of opportunities on the release workflow automation.
Webhooks configuration is located on the board administration tab.
Create a Hook
In order to create new webhook:
Click “Add hook“ button.
Webhook creation dialog has two tabs.
Summary
Headers
Summary tab
This tab contains the main properties
Name. The webhook name to be displayed in the table.
Columns. At the moment, the hooks could be triggered only when a package and/or version is moved to a particular column. You are able to choose All or multiple columns from packages or versions workflows.
In the following versions of the Release Management App we will add other types of webhooks triggers. Such as:
Start or release date change for package and/or version
Summary changed for package and/or version
Comment added or edited
Package and/or version is archived or unarchived
Package and/or version is deleted
A version was deployed onto the environment or removed from the environment
Please contact us in case you need to speed up the development of the above mentioned features.
Injectable variables in URL. You are able to inject the following variables to the hook URL:
Package or version id
Package or version name
Destination column id. Internal id of the column where package or version has been moved. List of columns with their ids you can receive via REST API
Destination column name
Start date of package or version
Release date
Link to package or version. The direct URL to package or version which has triggered the webhook. Such a variable is very convenient for any kink of notifications so the people can navigate to release or version to see the details.
User name. Full name of a user who has triggered the webhook.
Environments variables
Name
Type
Build Numbers
Version only variables. They will not be replaced to any value if they will be used on the package context
Project name. Name of a parent version project
Project Key. Key of a parent version project
Project id. Id of a parent version project
Method. HTTP method which will be used for the webhook. Available options are:
GET
POST
PUT
DELETE
URL. The URL which will be called from the our server while the webhook execution.
Injectable variables in Body. The variables which could be injected into the body while the webhook execution. The variable list is the same as for URL injection plus
packages and versions description
Request body. The request body which will be used while the webhook execution. For instance, it could contact XML or JSON.
JS-like functions for injectable variables
To finetune your web hooks even further you can use JS-like function for injectable variables in URL and Body sections of the hook. Below is a list of functions that could be used:
concat() - concatenates the string arguments to the calling string and returns a new string
{{entity.name.concat('-version')}}
equals() - returns boolean true/false if a calling string matches (exactly) the argument
{{entity.name.equals('version')}}
isEmpty (not exist) - returns boolean true/false if a calling string is empty
{{entity.name.isEmpty()}}
split (string regex) - divides a calling string into an ordered list of substrings by searching for the pattern, puts these substrings into an array, and returns the array. So, you can use .split(pattern)[index] to pickup the right element of the array. If used only .split(pattern) it will return a string of comma separated substrings.
slice (int beginIndex, int endIndex) - extracts a section of a string and returns it as a new string, without modifying the calling string
toLowerCase() - returns the calling string value converted to lower case
toUpperCase() - returns the calling string value converted to UPPER case
trim() - removes whitespace from both ends of a string and returns a new string, without modifying the original string
replaceAll (string regex, string replacement) - returns a new string with all matches of regex a replaced by a replacement
entity.name
above variable is used for example only. Functions are applicable to any string variable from the list.
Headers tab
On the headers tab, you can define headers for the webhook HTTP request.
The headers could be added in Key-Value format. Multiple headers are supported.
Webhook execution and history
The webhook will be executed if the trigger condition will be fulfilled. In the current version, the condition is a move of package or version to a particular column.
Release management app, will execute outbound HTTP request with the defined parameters and store execution results in the history table.
The history table is available under the hooks list table. In the table, you can see all the webhooks executions for the past 5 days. Older history items will be automatically deleted.
For each history items, the details could be reviewed: - full HTTP request with headers and full HTTP response. This will help to spot and solve any potential problems.
Important (!): IPs whitelisting
Webhooks are outcoming requests from our servers. If you want to receive these requests in your internal network (probably protected by Firewall) you need to while list IPs of our 3 nodes in different availability zones, namely:
IPs |
---|
135.181.149.107 |
157.90.227.168 |
162.55.36.74 |
Use cases
Slack Integration
Webhooks could be used for pushing notifications to Slack. Let’s configure the notification for a case when a version is moved to Done status.
Step 1. Navigate to https://api.slack.com/apps?new_app=1 to create an app “From scratch“
Step 2. Choose the name of the App (integration) and a space to send notifications
Step 3. Enable “Incoming Webhooks”
Step 4. Activate it and add new Webhook
Step 5. Allow integration and choose the destination channel from the selected space
Step 6. Copy URL for the Hook
Step 7. Open webhooks configuration in Release management and clone webhook template:
Choose Done column from a version in Columns field and paste received URL on step 6 to URL filed. Save the webhook.
Step 8. Move any version to Done column and observe a notification in the slack channel.
MS Teams integration
Step 1. Go to the channel where you want to add the webhook and select ••• More options from the top navigation bar.
Step 2. Select Connectors from the dropdown menu:
Step 3. Search for Incoming Webhook and select Add.
Step 4. Select Configure, provide a name, and upload an image for your webhook if required:
Step 5. The dialog window presents a unique URL that maps to the channel. Copy and save the webhook URL, to send information to Microsoft Teams and select Done:
Step 6. Open webhooks configuration in Release management and clone [Template] Sample MS Teams Notification:
Choose Done column from a version in Columns field and paste received URL on step 5 to URL filed. Save the webhook.
Step 7. Move any version to Done column and observe a notification in the MS Teams channel.
The webhook is available in the Teams channel.
Use the following code to create Adaptive Card JSON file:
The properties for Adaptive Card JSON file are as follows:
The
"type"
field must be"message"
.The
"attachments"
array contains a set of card objects.The
"contentType"
field must be set to Adaptive Card type.The
"content"
object is the card formatted in JSON.
Create Jira Issue
Let’s create a webhook which can help us to create a Jira ticket when a version is moved to UAT status on the board.
Step 1. Create Atlassian API token.
Navigate to https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/security/api-tokens
Fill token name (anything you like).
Store generated token somewhere as it will not be accessible in the future
Step 2. Retrieve required parameters for issue creation, in particular
ProjectID where you want to create issue
and IssueTypeID of the issue type that you want to create
Click “Create“ to open Create issue dialog in Jira. Select Project and Issue Type you would like to create.
Open the Development Panel in your browse, select Network Tab and click Fetch/XHR button
Create an issue and check “issue“ call
Open Payload and copy ProjectID and IssueTypeID
Step 3. Generate an authorization token (BASE64 token).
Open any site for generating basic authentication base64 string (for instance this one: https://mixedanalytics.com/knowledge-base/api-connector-encode-credentials-to-base-64/)
Enter your username and token from Step 1.
Copy Base 62 authentication spring
Step 4. Create a new WebHook in Release Management App.
Configure the following parameters.
Summary section
Method: POST
URL:
https://JIRA_INSTANCE_NAME.atlassian.net/rest/api/2/issue
Body:
{"fields":{"summary":"ISSUE_SUMMARY","issuetype":{"id":"YOUR_ISSUE_TYPE_ID_FROM_PREVIOUS_STEP"},"project":{"id":"YOUR_PROJECT_ID_FROM_PREVIOUS_STEP"}}}
Headers section
Add Authorization header
Key: Authorization
Value: BASE64_TOKEN_FROM_PREVIOUS_STEP
Add Content-Type header
Key: Content-Type
Value: application/json
Jenkins Integration
By using this guide, you can trigger builds in Jenkins remotely as a result of version and/or release appearance in a specific status.
Step 1. Make sure that your Jenkins server is accessible from Jira
Step 2. Create a new user in Jenkins
Select Manage Jenkins > Manage Users
Click on Create User
Fill in the information for your user (I’ll assume you’ve called this user “auto”)
Click the Sign Up button
Step 3. Turn job trigger URL on
Click Configure to edit the job. Under Build Triggers, check the box next to “Trigger Builds Remotely”. You’ll be asked to provide a secure token for validation. This should not in any way be related to the user which was created on Step 2, so don’t reuse the password. You might want to generate a new key using a tool like the Random Key Generator. Click Save to save the job information.
Step 4. Configure permissions for the created user
Select Manage Jenkins > Configure Global Security
·Assuming you’re using matrix-based security: add user from Step 2 to the list and check off the boxes:
Overall - Read
Job - Build
Job - Read
Job - Workspace
Click Save
Step 5. Create the URL
From the user list, find a user from step 2, click on the “configure” icon (the wrench and screwdriver) next to the user name
Underneath the user’s full name and description is a section labelled “API Token”. Click on the “Show API Token” button. This will reveal the API token you need to provide when triggering a job by URL
With this information, you can now create a URL that looks like this:
http://user_name:your_tocken@your_jenkins.com/job/your_job_name/build?token=your_auth_tocken_from_step_3