1.1 About SendQuick Pte Ltd
SendQuick™ develops and offers enterprise mobile messaging solutions to facilitate and improve business workflow and communication, and is widely used in areas such as IT alerts & notifications, secure remote access via 2-Factor Authentication, emergency & broadcast messaging, business process automation and system availability monitoring.
In addition to functionality, SendQuick’s messaging solutions have also been developed with other key features in mind. These include security and confidentiality of company information, and ease in mitigating disruption during unplanned system downtime such as that arising from cyberattacks.
1.2 About SendQuick Cloud
SendQuick Cloud is a cloud based Software-as-a-Service (Saas) application to monitor and notify for cloud based incidents with omni-channel messaging capability. It has ability to monitor using ICMP Ping, Port check and URL check. It has policy based notifications using Email and Webhook, supporting any applications as well as Cloud Providers like AWS, Azure, Alibaba Cloud, Google Cloud and Oracle. Given the above integration methods, SendQuick Cloud is able to work with any applications to send notifications. Supporting notification channels include SMS, Telegram, Slack, Facebook Messenger and others. Lastly, there is Roster for messaging based on duties and time frame for each recipients, reducing alert fatigue.
1.3 Purpose of Document
This document is a guide on how to integrate SendQuick Cloud with Alibaba Cloud Monitor to send message notifications and alerts. In this guide, we will be using SendQuick Cloud for the integration.
Alibaba Cloud Monitor is accessible from the Alibaba Console. You will need to login to Alibaba Cloud Console and select Product and Services (on the Left Menu) and is presented with all the Alibaba Cloud options. Navigate to Monitor and Management and select Cloud Monitor. You will need to configure the Alert function as found in the Left Menu and shown in the diagram below.
In Alibaba Cloud Monitor, you can send Alert via Email (SMTP) and Webhook (HTTP) method. This document will explain both methods in details in the following sections.
2.0 Configure in SendQuick Cloud
SendQuick Cloud is designed to complement the systems, virtual instances, devOps and other applications on the cloud for sending message notifications when an event happen. This will your services uptime for your cloud services.
2.1 Email Filters in SendQuick Cloud
SendQuick Cloud can receive any emails (SMTP) from any applications, apply the configured filters (policies) and if the condition matches, messages will be sent to the recipients. When starting to configure, create an account in SendQuick Cloud and go to Email Filter (left Menu) and Create New Mail Filter Rule. You will be presented with the interface as shown below.
You will notice the Email Address TO as the first Policy item. The email address is pre-assigned by SendQuick Cloud and will follow the name of your account name. This email address cannot be changed and will be used to configure in Cloud Monitor as explained in section 3.1.
2.2 Cloud Provider in SendQuick Cloud using Webhook
The second method to integrate between Cloud Monitor and SendQuick Cloud is using Webhook method. This is via an Application Programming Interface (API) where the event information is sent to SendQuick Cloud and SendQuick Cloud will process and check against the pre-configured policies (conditions). If the conditions are met, it will trigger an alert to the assigned users.
In summary, the flow is as below:
The webhook sending to SendQuick Cloud is found on the Service Configuration for Cloud Provider in SendQuick Cloud. This is depicted in interface below.
Chose the Cloud Provider as shown on the left Menu in the diagram above.
Copy the Integration URL as shown on the top of the Integration page. This is the URL to be configured in Cloud Monitor as shown in section 4.0.
When any event happens or there is a need to send a notification alert, Alibaba Cloud Monitor (Cloud Monitor) can trigger an email to SendQuick Cloud. SendQuick Cloud will then convert the email message to alerts and send to mobile phone based on the policy (filter) rules assigned. The email messages are sent from Cloud Monitor to SendQuick Cloud for processing.
In Cloud Monitor, the first configuration is to configure the Alert Contacts, creating the recipient list to receive the notifications. Since SendQuick Cloud is used to manage the recipients on the different channels, you just need to configure one (1) email in Alert Contacts. This is explained below.
3.1 Configure Email Alert Contact for SendQuick Cloud in Cloud Monitor
On the main page of Cloud Monitor, select Alerts and Alert Contacts. These are shown in the Figures below.
Figure 7: Alerts Contacts
Once selected, select Create Alert Contact, provide a Name, insert the Email Address (from SendQuick Cloud), verify and select OK. This will create the new contact and an email will be sent to the recipient (in this case SendQuick Cloud) for verification.
Do note that Cloud Monitor requires the email to be verified to be confirmed. There is an Inbox in Email Filter Rules in sendQuick Cloud that capture all the emails. The Email from Alibaba will be logged in this Inbox (see below).
Select the Inbox (after Alibaba has sent the Email), click on the Alibaba email message, click on the Confirm Email link and the confirmation/verified page will confirm the process.
The Alibaba Email is ready to use as seen below.
Once the Alert Contacts is created, you are ready to configure the Alert Rules.
Select Alert Rules and Create Alert Rule and you will see the interface to configure the rule as below.
Complete the desired resources, rule name, metrics (threshold) and all relevant information in the Related Resources and Set Alert Rules section as shown above.
Then, move on to Notification Methods and you need to select the desired group in the Notification Contact, selected Groups. Select the desired group for the rule by moving the list from Left to Right. This is shown in the Figure below.
You may notice that your contact is not in the group. In the Quickly Create A Contact Group, select and you will be able to create a group, as shown below.
Once the group is created, you will be able to select from the Left Box to the Right Group Box, as shown in the earlier Figure. Select the required group and Choose Email+Dingtalk for Notification Methods.
This indicate the intention to use Email as the notification method.
Scroll down the page and you will notice the Email subject. You can complete the desired.
Scroll down the page and you will notice the Email subject. You can complete the desired Email Subject when the email is sent. You can complete the Remark as well.
Cloud Monitor group the Webhook configuration in the same Rule page. This is in the HTTP Callback URL. You can configure by inserting the Integration URL from Section 2.2. This is the webhook that will send the alert metric from Cloud Monitor to sendQuick. Once the rule is Confirmed, the summary page will display the rule as below.
You can create more rules, as desired and use either Email or webhook to send the notifications to sendQuick.
Upon completion, you can start using sendQuick Cloud and configure all the filter/policies and user roster to receive the alerts on their phones. For more sendQuick Cloud configuration, refer to sendQuick Cloud User Manual or Video Tutorial.