Zendesk integration for Grafana IRM

The Zendesk integration for Grafana IRM handles ticket events sent from Zendesk webhooks. The integration provides grouping, auto-acknowledge and auto-resolve logic via customizable alert templates.

Configure Grafana IRM to receive alerts from Zendesk

In Grafana IRM, navigate to IRM > Integrations > Monitoring Systems
Click + New integration
Select Zendesk from the list of available integrations
Enter a name and description for the integration, click Create
A new page will open with the integration details. Copy the IRM Integration URL from HTTP Endpoint section

Configure Zendesk to send alerts to Grafana IRM

Create a new “Trigger or automation” webhook connection in Zendesk to send events to Grafana IRM using the integration URL above.

Refer to Zendesk documentation for more information on how to create and manage webhooks.

After setting up a webhook in Zendesk, create a new trigger with the following condition: Meet ANY of the following conditions: "Ticket Is Created", "Ticket status Changed"

Set Notify webhook as the trigger action and select the webhook you created earlier. In the JSON body field, use the following JSON template:

{
  "ticket": {
    "id": "{{ticket.id}}",
    "url": "{{ticket.url}}",
    "status": "{{ticket.status}}",
    "title": "{{ticket.title}}",
    "description": "{{ticket.description}}"
  }
}

After setting up the connection, you can test it by creating a new ticket in Zendesk. You should see a new alert group in Grafana IRM.

Grouping, auto-acknowledge and auto-resolve

Grafana IRM provides grouping, auto-acknowledge and auto-resolve logic for the Zendesk integration:

Alerts created from ticket events are grouped by ticket ID
Alert groups are auto-acknowledged when the ticket status is set to “Pending”
Alert groups are auto-resolved when the ticket status is set to “Solved”

To customize this behaviour, consider modifying alert templates in integration settings.

Configure Grafana IRM to send data to Zendesk

Grafana IRM can automatically create and resolve tickets in Zendesk via outgoing webhooks. This guide provides example webhook configurations for common use cases, as well as information on how to set up a user in Zendesk to be used by Grafana IRM.

Prerequisites

Create a new user in Zendesk to be used by Grafana IRM. Obtain an API token for the user, these credentials will be used to communicate with Zendesk API
Make sure the user has appropriate permissions to create and update tickets in Zendesk

Create tickets in Zendesk

The steps below describe how to create an outgoing webhook in Grafana IRM that will allow to automatically create tickets in Zendesk from Grafana IRM alert groups.

Create a new Outgoing Webhook in Grafana IRM, and configure it as follows:

Trigger type: Alert Group Created
Integrations: Select integrations that will trigger the webhook
HTTP method: POST
Webhook URL:

https://<INSTANCE>.zendesk.com/api/v2/tickets

Replace <INSTANCE> with your Zendesk instance.

Username: Username of the Zendesk user, followed by /token (e.g. user@example.com/token)
Password: API token of the Zendesk user

Use the following JSON template as webhook data:

{
  "ticket": {
    "type": "incident",
    "subject": "{{alert_group.title}}",
    "comment": {
      "body": "This ticket is created automatically by Grafana IRM. Alert group {{alert_group.id}}: {{alert_group.permalinks.web}}"
    }
  }
}

Resolve tickets in Zendesk

The steps below describe how to create an outgoing webhook in Grafana IRM that will allow to automatically resolve tickets in Zendesk when an alert group is resolved in Grafana IRM.

Trigger type: Resolved
Integrations: Select integrations that will trigger the webhook
HTTP method: PUT
Webhook URL:

https://<INSTANCE>.zendesk.com/api/v2/tickets/{{responses.<WEBHOOK_ID>.ticket.id}}

Replace <INSTANCE> with your Zendesk instance, and <WEBHOOK_ID> with the ID of the webhook used for creating tickets.

Username: Username of the Zendesk user, followed by /token (e.g. user@example.com/token)
Password: API token of the Zendesk user

Use the following JSON template as webhook data:

{
  "ticket": {
    "status": "solved",
    "comment": {
      "body": "Resolved by Grafana IRM.",
      "public": false
    }
  }
}

Advanced usage

The examples above describe how to create outgoing webhooks in Grafana IRM that will allow to automatically create and resolve tickets in Zendesk.

Consider modifying example templates to fit your use case (e.g. to include more information on alert groups). Refer to outgoing webhooks documentation for more information on available template variables and webhook configuration.

For more information on Zendesk API, refer to Zendesk API documentation.