Creating tickets in JIRA Service Desk (Cloud application) with NetCrunch

See how you can configure your NetCrunch to forward alerts and convert them into tickets in the JIRA Service Desk hosted in the Atlassian Cloud.

Enable NetCrunch to post tickets to JIRA

To enable NetCrunch to post tickets to your JIRA Service Desk, you need to first set up an Integration Profile for JIRA. To do so, click Monitoring Integration Profiles at the top of the NetCrunch application.

In the editor, the new Integration Profile needs to be named and you need to choose the type of JIRA Service Desk you want to integrate with. There are two possibilities: JIRA Cloud - the Service Desk hosted by Atlassian in their Cloud, or JIRA Local Server - the Service Desk hosted on your own server. This article will focus on the Service Desk hosted in the Cloud, therefore select JIRA Cloud as an Application Type.

Now enter your Site Name (i.e. "test" for https://test@atlassian.net/...) and the ID of the Service Desk the tickets should be posted to. You can find the Desk ID in the JIRA Cloud by clicking Raise a request and finding the .../portal/{id}/... part in the customer URL. The {id} you find there is your Service Desk ID.

Enter the email address and the password of the user account that will be used to create the tickets in JIRA on behalf of NetCrunch. You can create a new user especially for NetCrunch alerts, but make sure that it has all the permissions needed to raise requests. Also, make sure you enter the correct credentials because if you repeatedly attempt to access the Service Desk with incorrect credentials, JIRA will block requests from this user until he proves to be human by logging in with a Captcha request.

JIRA Integration Profile in NetCrunch

Create an alert that sends tickets to JIRA Cloud

To allow NetCrunch to use the JIRA integration, it's necessary to create an alerting script (or edit the already existing one). Follow the steps below to create a new alerting script.

  • Click Monitoring Alerting Escalation Scripts
  • In the Alerting Scripts window click Add Alerting Script
  • Click Add and select Action to Run Immediately
  • Click Integrations tab and select JIRA Service Desk Ticket
Alert Escalation Script for integration with JIRA Service Desk

A new window will appear without much to configure. NetCrunch will load the different Request Types that are configured in your Service Desk. The Request Type chosen must contain the Summary, Description, and Priority fields, otherwise, the alert can not be sent properly. For example, create a specific Request Type for NetCrunch alerts in JIRA.

Test creating tickets by clicking Test. The test procedure will open in a small window. If everything has been set up correctly, the test should finish with a "Successfully executed" message, and a new test ticket should now appear in the JIRA Service Desk where NetCrunch should send the messages.

Result of Testing

This procedure will not work with the "Comment Ticket" operation. To test the "Comment Ticket" operation, you need to create an alerting script with "Create Ticket" operation as an Action to Run Immediately and the "Comment Ticket" operation as an Action to Run on Alert Close. 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.

  • Right-click the node where you want to create an alert
  • Select the Node Settings and click Alerts&Reports in the node settings window
  • Click Add Alert, select the Basic tab and choose Node monitoring is disabled
  • Right-click the new alert and select Assign Predefined Alerting Script Your Script name
New alert script for JIRA Cloud

If you now trigger the alert (Disable the Node Monitoring), you will create a ticket in the JIRA Service Desk. If this alert is closed (Node Monitoring enabled), the JIRA ticket will be commented on and the status will be updated to your chosen status. If such an alerting script is attached to various alerts, NetCrunch will send tickets to JIRA each time when the given alert is generated.

Ticket commented by NetCrunch in JIRA Service Desk

WebHooks (Two-way-integration)

JIRA Service Desk is just one of our many two-way-integrations available in NetCrunch. You can easily configure a WebHook that sends information back to NetCrunch when the ticket is closed in JIRA so that the respective alert in NetCrunch is closed as well. This does not resolve the problem which caused the alert, but it will close the alert generated by NetCrunch (i.e. Node is still down even though the alert is closed).

To receive WebHooks from JIRA, you need to configure the NetCrunch API Key access. To do so, go to the JIRA Integration Profile and click "Open API Key Manager". Copy the WebHook URL and replace the [Web_Access_address] with your Web access address (i.e. https://123.456.789.0/ncinf/rest...).

API Key Manager

Go to JIRA, select Project Settings Automation Add Rule and create a Custom Rule. Build a When (Status changed) - If (Issue matches Customer Request Type = {NetCrunch Alert Type}) Statement that triggers a Then-Action. Select WebHook as a Then-Action and add the URL with your replaced Web_Access_Address in the URL field.

Now, when NetCrunch creates a ticket and it is resolved by a JIRA agent, the alert in NetCrunch will be closed as well.

alert closed

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