Topic:

What is Web Posting and how to configure web posting for use in Everbridge Suite.

Description:

Web posting allows an organization to post Everbridge notifications to a web address using webhooks.  For example, a college might want to post its delayed opening on its website homepage using the same language as it provided to its students via the Everbridge notification.

NOTE: If you do not see Web Posting Settings under Publishing Options as noted below and would like to have this option enabled, please contact Everbridge Technical Support to have this feature enabled. Please reference this knowledge base article for faster resolution.

Minimal Everbridge Configuration:

As the initial publishing option for posting a message somewhere, Web Posting can be configured in Publishing Options. This is used less now since we added Social Media, CAP RSS, Post to Portal and Everbridge Web Widget.

1. Log in to the manager portal and select the desired organization from the far upper-left of the page.
2. Choose Organization from the Settings tab drop-down menu.
3. Expand Publishing Options on the left.
4. Select Web Posting. 

To initiate notifications to partner systems or client-side web sites, you can provide one or more URLs. As needed, provide a corresponding username and password for each URL. When sending your notifications, you can select Web Posting as a publishing option and then select the check box for the specific URLs. Customer Web Service Requirements The Customer Web Service receives the HTTP POST notification from the Everbridge system. In order to set up the Customer Web Service to receive Everbridge notifications, the web service must meet the following requirements:

• The web service must exist and be reachable from the Internet.
• The web service endpoint must accept an HTTP POST of content type "application/json" with a JSON encoded body.
• The web service may use HTTP Basic Authentication.
• The web service may use SSL/HTTPS.
• The web service must respond with a valid HTTP status code as an acknowledgment for successful or unsuccessful receipt of the Notification.

Everbridge Notification Format:

An Everbridge notification sent to the web service endpoint will be JSON-encoded and will have the properties shown in the following sample message.

{"title" : "Notification Title", "body" : "Notification Body", "fileAttachments" : ""}

JSON parsers are available for most programming languages. Your web service endpoint should parse the above message. After parsing the message, you can perform whatever logic you desire using the properties of the message.

Everbridge Configuration:

Once the web service endpoint is working as discussed, you can configure the service in your Everbridge settings.

1. Log in to the manager portal and select the desired organization from the far upper-left of the page.
2. Choose Organization from the Settings tab drop-down menu.
3. Expand Publishing Options on the left.
4. Select Web Posting. 
5. Click the plus sign next to New Web Posting under Web Posting Settings to add a URL.
6. Input the following values:
   1. URL: The URL to which you want to POST an Everbridge Notification.
   2. Display Name: The name this URL POST should have in the Everbridge User Interface when creating a Notification.
   3. Username: IF the URL requires HTTP BASIC Authentication, the username for the URL.
   4. Password: IF the URL requires HTTP BASIC Authentication, the password for the URL.
7. Click Save.

Having followed these steps, you will see the value you set for Display Name when you select the Web Posting check box during notification creation. Selecting the option will send a message to your web service.

Stopping or Expiring a Web Posting Notification

Customers using the Web Posting Notification feature currently have two options to stop or expire a Notification:

• Develop logic on the Customer Web Service to remove or replace a Notification based on your own business requirements (for example, elapsed time, updated HTTP POST, and so forth).
• Develop a web service call to Everbridge's REST API for a Notification Configuration element in order to determine if the Notification Title is listed as an active notification. This call can be executed at an interval of your choosing, but not recommended at less than 5 minutes from the time of receipt of the original HTTP POST.

Please see knowledge base article EBS: Everbridge Web Widget for Publishing Notifications in Everbridge Suite for more information.