Sending NetCrunch alerts as tasks to Asana

Asana is a web-based application to help you make the planning and execution of your projects much easier by breaking them down into tasks. In this article, we will describe how to configure your NetCrunch to send alerts as tasks directly into your asana Projects to enable your team to resolve them as part of their asana Projects.

Enable NetCrunch to post messages to Asana

To enable NetCrunch to post important alerts directly to your asana Project, you need to first set up an Integration Profile for asana. To do so, click Monitoring Integration Profiles at the top of the NetCrunch application.

In the editor, the name for the new Integration Profile needs to be entered and you will be asked for a "Personal Access Token". To configure such a token, follow the link: https://asana.com/guide/help/fundamentals/settings#gl-apps.

Creating a new Personal Access Token is quite straightforward. Create a new token for NetCrunch, copy it into your Integration Profile, and save it. With this Profile, you are now able to access all workspaces and projects that you are able to access as a user as well. You might want to consider creating a separate user for NetCrunch alerts.

Define alert sending tasks

To allow NetCrunch to utilize the Integration, it's necessary to create an alerting script (or edit the already existing one). If you want NetCrunch to post the messages into a specific company in asana, or specific workspace, make sure that this company or workspace is created before you set up the configuration for a NetCrunch alert. The steps below explain how to create a new alerting script in NetCrunch.

1. Click Monitoring Alerting Escalation Scripts
2. In the Alerting Scripts Window click Add Alerting Script
3. Click Add and select Action to Run Immediately
4. Click Integrations tab and select Asana Task

A new window will appear, and NetCrunch will take a moment to retrieve the list of your workspaces. Make sure that you are using the correct asana profile and select the workspace where you want to forwardNetCrunch alerts. If you want to send the tasks to a specific Project, you have to provide the Project ID here, which you can find in the web-URL of your browser. When you select the workspace and the Project in the asana application, the URL should look like this: https://app.asana.com/0/XXXXXXXXXX38485/list. Simply copy the second part of the address (XXXXXXXXXX38485) into your configuration.

It is also possible to add one assignee to the automatically created Tasks to notify them directly of the occurring problems forwarded from NetCrunch. To do so, enter the e-mail address that s/he used to register at asana as shown in the example text.

Test sending messages to an asana Project by clicking the Test button. A small window with the test procedure will appear, and if everything is configured properly, the test should finish with the "Successfully executed" message. The test task should now appear in the Project where NetCrunch should send the alerts.

Updating or closing tasks in asana in response to NetCrunch alert

The procedure described earlier will not work with the "Close Task" operations: "Update and Close Task" and "Delete Task". To test the "Close Task" operations you need to create an alerting script with "Open Task" operation as an Action to Run Immediately and the selected "Close Ticket" operation as an Action to Run on Alert Close. To test both of them, you will have to create two different alerting scripts. Then select a node and create an alert (for example Node Monitoring Disabled) to test and assign the alerting script to this alert. The following steps explain how to create a "Node Monitoring Disabled" alert for a single node.

1. Right-click the node where you want to create an alert
2. Select the Node Settings and click Alerts&Reports in the node settings window
3. Click Add Alert, select the Basic tab and choose Node monitoring is disabled
4. Right-click the new Alert and select Assign Predefined Alerting Script Your Script name

If you now trigger the alert (Disable the Node Monitoring), you will create a task. If this alert is closed (Node Monitoring Enabled) and you selected "Update and Close Task" the task will be commented and closed. In case you selected "Delete Task", the task will be commented, closed and then directly deleted. After such an alerting script is attached to various alerts, NetCrunch will send messages to asana each time when the given alert is generated.

It is possible to send alerts to different Projects and workspaces. With the Personal Access Token provided, you can access all workspaces with this integration that are available to you with a single Integration Profile. But if you want to access workspaces outside of your user's scope, you will either have to add a new user to the workspace or create a new Integration Profile.

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