Configure Slack

Slack is a widely used tool to bring internal communications together in one place. This configuration will allow you to send alert notifications from BizTalk360 alarms directly to the Slack channel of your choice. The primary step to receive notifications in Slack is to configure your Slack channel in BizTalk360 using your Slack Access Token. If you do not have an Access Token, create an application in Slack and generate a token here. Once you configure Slack in BizTalk360, enable the Slack notification channel from the Alarm creation blade to complete the process.

To reiterate, Setting up a Slack notification in BizTalk360 is a two-step process:

• Configure Slack channel in BizTalk360 by entering the Slack Access Token
• Enabling Slack Notification channel in BizTalk360 Alarm

These steps will be described below.

Configuring Slack Channel in BizTalk360

To configure Slack Channel in BizTalk360, you need to follow the steps as shown below:

• Log in to BizTalk360 application (as a Super user)
• Click the Settings icon from the menu option at the left of the page
• Click Notifications from the left menu bar to expand
• Click Notification Channels
• Click the ellipse icon against one of the Channel names; for instance, B360.Notifier.SlackNotification
• Click Edit
• Click Next in case if you do not want to edit the DLL and the logo
• Slack Gateway settings 
  • Gateway URL - This is a pre-filled tab, you cannot edit this value
  • Access Token - Enter the Access Token value copied from Slack
• Notification Settings - Enable "Notify only Error(s) and Warning(s)" to notify only the error and warning state artifacts in the alert. Else the artifacts which are in a healthy state will also be listed in the alert.
• With this, the basic settings are completed. Enter the proxy server details if the BizTalk360 environment is behind a proxy (this is optional)
• Click the Save button to save the Slack configuration settings
• Once you click save, the Is Configured field changes from No to Yes

Enabling Slack Notification Channel in BizTalk360 Alarm

Once you have configured Slack in BizTalk360, you can enable the Slack notification from the Alarm creation blade to complete the process. BizTalk360 will start monitoring the status of the artifact based on the threshold condition. If there is any threshold violation, you will receive the alerts to the configured Slack notification channel.

To enable the Slack notification channel, you need to follow the steps as shown below:

• From the Home dashboard, click the Monitoring tab
• Select Manage Alarms
• Click New Alarm
• Select the alarm type as Threshold Monitoring to create a threshold monitoring alarm
• Enter a descriptive name for the Alarm (Slack Notifications), Email id, and Alarm Description
• In the Custom Notification Channel(s) section, you will notice Slack is listed with a toggle icon. Toggle the icon to enable the Slack Notifications.
• Enter the username that you use to log into Slack (say, scottacme), and the channel name (#Acme)
• Click Validate to validate the configuration details of the notification channel
• Click Next to continue with the configuration of the alarm and save it
• Map the alarm with any Application artefacts and the BizTalk Server environment
• Once the mapping is done, whenever there is any threshold violation in the environment, Scott will receive the alert notifications on the Slack #Acme channel. He need not log in to BizTalk360 to view the status of the environment at any point in time.