Integrate SAP Cloud ALM with Slack

[sabatale]

One of the best things about SAP Cloud ALM is how open and flexible the solution is. You can easily integrate it with standard mappings, such as ServiceNow or Microsoft Teams, but also build your own. With the recent release of External Chat Systems events (see this blog post), customers and partners can now extend SAP Cloud ALM to various chat solutions. The present post will highlight how to do so with Slack, arguably one of the most popular products on the market today.

Event Actions

"Events" are essentially triggers. Whenever SAP Cloud ALM detects an anomaly, such as a failed call on CPI, a high number of dumps in S/4HANA or an unusual peak in late vendor payments on the business side, you have the choice to setup a follow-up action.

The easiest actions would be the automated creation of an alert in CALM itself - the "Create Alert" action - or send an email to a distribution list - the "Send Email To" action. However, most customers already use corporate ticketing solutions, in which case a ticket can be automatically generated in ServiceNow - the "Create Ticket" action.

Another type of action is the "Send Chat Message". This is most likely for events that are critical and require immediate attention, in which case you may want to not only create a ticket but also ping the responsible team on MS Teams, Slack or else.

Slack Webhooks

First you need to create a Slack App. This will allow you to define a custom webhook for SAP Cloud ALM to send data to. The official Slack documentation details the steps very well: https://api.slack.com/messaging/webhooks.

After creating the app, navigate to Incoming Webhooks and active the feature. Then click Add New Webhook to Workspace to generate the target URL (starting with https://hooks.slack.com/services/).

You will need to associate the webhook with a single channel. For testing purpose, I'd recommend you create a separate one until you feel comfortable going live with the integration.

Slack App

The Fun part

Now you need to define your message formatting. Luckily Slack provides you with a template sandbox where you can easily preview how your code will look like: Slack Block Kit Builder.

You can start with something as simple as a single line message:

{ "text": "This is your message." }

Or use Markdown to make it look more professional:

{

   "blocks":[

      {

         "type":"section",

         "text":{

            "type":"mrkdwn",

            "text":"Hello, this is your message! \n *Bold* text goes *here*."

         }

      }

   ]

}

Slack Block Builder

Stay CALM

Pretty easy, right? We now have a webhook and payload to be defined in SAP Cloud ALM.

Access the BTP Subaccount and create a destination as follow:

• URL: Your Slack webhook


• Type: Internet


• Authentication: NoAuthentication

Navigate to your instance, open the Administration and find the application External API Management. Go to Webhooks Management and create a new one as follow:

• Destination Source: BTP Destination


• Destination ID: The destination you just created


• External Resource Type: Chat


• Destination Type: Slack (free text)

Go to Mappings Management and create a new one as well. The Source and Destination are free text fields and do not influence the mapping at this time. It is up to you to choose a Mapping Type based on your own preference - you can learn more about this here: https://help.sap.com/docs/cloud-alm/apis/mapping.

Here is an example for Payload-based mappings to help you start:

{

  "_information": {

    "_version": "1",

    "_source": "SAP Cloud ALM Event Situation",

    "_destination": "Slack",

    "_name": "SAP Cloud ALM Event Situation to Slack",

    "_comment": ""

  },

  "structure": {

    "request": {

      "type": "message",

      "attachments": [

        {

          "blocks": [

            {

              "type": "section",

              "text": {

                "type": "mrkdwn",

                "text": "*[SAP Cloud ALM for Operations]* #{subject}"

              },

              "accessory": {

                "type": "image",

                "image_url": "https://yourimage.jpg",

                "alt_text": "SAP Cloud ALM Alerting"

              }

            }

          ]

        }

      ]

    },

    "response": {

      "chatCreated": true

    }

  },

  "eventTypeMapping": {

    "_comment": "Specific event type mapping",

    "operationMappings": [

      {

        "eventType": "EVENT-SITUATION.CREATED",

        "operation": "POST",

        "responseRoot": ""

      }

    ]

  }

}

Finally go to Subscriptions Management and create one as follow:

• Type: Built-In


• Webhook: Your Webhook.


• Mapping: Your Mapping.

Voilà !

You can now assign your subscription to any of your SAP Cloud ALM Events and test it. All requests are logged in the API Console in SAP Cloud ALM, where you should expect a Status 200 OK with the Response Data:

{ "chatCreated": true }

Slack Alert

[Henk]

Thank you very much for this article, it's really very straightforward to accomplish this.

There's one strange thing though... The API runs fine for an number of days, sometimes even weeks. Alert data is coming in Slack just fine. But then, suddenly, without any change to the API, it stops working and throws a '502 BAD_GATEWAY' in stead of the '200 OK' (as depicted below). Obviously, no alert data is received in Slack as well. When checking the different components listed in your article, everything is working fine. The only 'solution' I found so far, is deleting the Mapping Rules and copy the same Mapping Rules in Mappings Management again. Then it will work again for some time, until it eventually stops working again. Is this behavior common?

Bad Gateway thrown