July 2013 Summaries

PagerDuty has announced the integration of its incident management platform with two cloud monitoring services: Apica and Stackdriver. Apica is a tool for monitoring website and mobile performance, and its integration with PagerDuty allows for automatic incident triggering when a website becomes unavailable, with configuration being quick and straightforward. Stackdriver, a SaaS monitoring solution, aids in identifying and resolving issues within cloud-based applications, and its deep integration with PagerDuty enables the automatic triggering of incidents and synchronization of incident status changes between the two services. Both integrations aim to streamline the monitoring and incident response processes, with detailed instructions available in their respective integration guides and support offered for any integration challenges.

PagerDuty is introducing Webhooks for incidents, allowing users to receive HTTP callbacks when specific events occur in their accounts, with details sent to a designated URL. The author demonstrates using Firebase to receive Webhooks without building a backend, highlighting the ease of integration and setup. Through a hackday project, they visualize incoming incident data by modifying a d3.js example, assigning pseudo-geographic coordinates to incidents and displaying the last 40 received Webhooks. Although the project code is not presented as a model of JavaScript or d3.js excellence, it effectively illustrates the potential of Webhooks in real-time data visualization. Webhooks are currently available to a limited group of PagerDuty users, with interested parties encouraged to contact support for access.

PagerDuty has announced a new direct integration with Compose, a MongoDB-as-a-service platform, which enables users to manage alerts for critical database changes or performance issues more effectively. The integration allows Compose's alerts to trigger incidents within PagerDuty, which will then notify teams based on their predefined escalation policies, on-call schedules, and contact preferences. This collaboration aims to enhance database management and incident response, and interested users are encouraged to explore the integration guide and sign up for a trial of both services.

PagerDuty's June Hack Day showcased innovative projects, with the Most Awesome award going to "PebbleDuty," developed by Daniel Ribeiro and Mark Matta. This project enables users to trigger incidents on PagerDuty directly from a Pebble watch, which connects via Bluetooth to smartphones and is highly customizable through its open SDK. By pressing a button on the watch, users can send an HTTP request to create a triggered incident, providing a convenient solution for situations when phones or laptops are inaccessible. Future enhancements aim to expand functionality to acknowledge, resolve, or escalate incidents using the watch buttons. The PebbleDuty code is available on GitHub, encouraging further development and customization.

PagerDuty has introduced a comprehensive API for all elements of its system, including a new API specifically for managing escalation policies that allows users to access, add, modify, and delete these policies and rules. Alongside this API, the PagerDuty team has completely redesigned the web interface for escalation policies to enhance usability and clarity in understanding incident escalation processes within teams. Detailed instructions for utilizing the new API are available on their developer site, and support is readily accessible via email for any questions or issues.

PagerDuty has enhanced its API by enabling CORS headers, allowing users to embed information about their PagerDuty accounts into intranet pages using only client-side scripting, such as JavaScript. This functionality enables users to display service statuses within wiki pages, utilizing a sample AJAX code snippet compatible with modern browsers that requires jQuery and an authentication token. Users are advised to generate an API key, preferably read-only, and to avoid publishing their scripts publicly to maintain security. With CORS enabled, all API actions, including event triggering, can now be executed via JavaScript, providing greater integration flexibility.