Custom HTTP header support for problem notification WebHooks

WebHooks are our go-to “Swiss Army knife” solution for notifying 3rd party systems about Dynatrace-detected problems where we have no out-of-the-box integration. By allowing you to additionally specify custom HTTP header fields within WebHooks, custom WebHook integration is now more flexible than ever.

The Custom integration (aka, WebHook) option for custom problem-notification integration (see callout below) enables you to integrate with any 3rd-party system that accepts HTTP POST requests. As pushed payloads are completely customizable, you can model any format to meet the requirements of the system you’re integrating with.

One application of the WebHook integration could be to directly send raw problem meta information to an AWS Lambda function where a detected problem can be further filtered and processed. If you’re within your own data center, you can easily run your own receiving REST endpoint or simply attach one of your own backend systems.

To set up WebHook integration with custom HTTP headers

1. Go to Settings  > Problem notifications > Set up notifications.
2. Click the Custom integration tile.

   

3. Once you’ve defined a Name and Webhook URL for your custom integration (for details on basic custom integration setup, see

   How can I set up outgoing problem notifications using a web hook?), click the Add header button in the Additional HTTP headers section. 
   

   The header section allows you to add or override any HTTP header by specifying key/value pairs, such as Content-Type: application/xml.
4. Click the Create basic authorization header button to create a basic base-64 encoded authentication header in the formAuthorization: base64(‘user:pwd’). Alternatively, you can set any authorization header manually by adding a header with key Authorization and a value such as Api-Token 12345.
   An example custom header fields specification is shown below:

   
   

   And here is a basic authentication header example:

   

5. Following a trial run, you’ll see the configured custom header fields along with your basic authentication, as shown below.

   

Another improvement within the handling of our WebHook integration is the possibility to overwrite the default JSON content type by defining your own ‘Content-Type’ header field. In case that you are overwriting the content type Dynatrace will no longer check for a valid JSON payload and will therefore allow you to send any type of payload, such as plain text, HTML encoded values or XML.

The newly introduced custom header fields and to use custom content types further improves Dynatrace ability to deliver detected problems in any third-party system. Reading that blog post, you maybe already got an interesting idea where Dynatrace detected problems could be pushed to.

We are curious about your individual Dynatrace integration, as we did our Dynatrace UFO. So maybe you take a picture and share with us at Twitter @Dynatrace.