ExoSense™ Insight Action for Slack

Overview

Actions are ExoSense Insights that are subscribed to rule events and do not produce an outlet signal. They can be built in almost the exact same way as External Insight rules and transforms. They are intended to perform an action based on a particular rule status being triggered. For example, an action could post data to a spreadsheet, send a slack message, or send data to a custom API based on a desired rule status being triggered.

See https://github.com/exosite/exosense_insight_example_murano_lua for more general information on exosense insights.

Tutorial: Build an action to send Slack messages

1. Create a murano application from this template

• This template already contains a functioning action for sending Slack messages
• You can make changes to the code or add additional actions to the 'Module' -> 'your_code_here'
• Copy the domain of your application by clicking 'copy app link' - you will use this in step 2, but will add /interface to the end if it

2. Publish your murano application as an insight service so that you can connect it to ExoSense

• In Murano, go to IoT Marketplace and click on Publish on the left
• Element Name: Recommend including 'Insight' in the name
• Element Type: Service
• Element Variation: ExoSense Insight
• Configuration File (YAML): https://<the domain of your application>/interface

3. Connect your new insight service to ExoSense

• Click on your ExoSense instance
• From the "Manage Application" modal that pops up, select "Insight Services" on the left
• Click "Add Insight Service"
• Find the newly published service and click it
• Click "Add to Solution"

4. Create a Slack App that is connected to your organization's Slack Workspace

• Go to api.slack.com
• Click "Create an app"
• Add “Incoming Webhooks” feature and create a webhook
• Copy the webhook URL
• Note: Slack's updated API now requires that you set the username and emoji within the Slack App itself. The updated API also does not allow you to send messages to more than channel from a single webhook. You must create a unique webhook for each channel that you'd like to post to.

5. In ExoSense, create an action definition

• Navigate to Configuration -> Actions
• Add a new Action
• Set the Webhook URL using the value copied from the Slack Incoming Webhook configuration

6. Add your action to a rule

• Navigate to the modify asset page of an asset
• Click the more-vert below a rule to add/edit actions
• Add a new action using the action definition created in the previous step