BigPanda’s agnostic architecture allows you to automatically ingest raw alert data from monitoring, topology, collaboration, or change sources.

BigPanda offers 50+ standard integrations to common monitoring and observability tools. BigPanda also allows you to configure, test and deploy custom integrations to fit your monitoring and collaboration needs.

Integrations allow you to shorten and automate incident triage by creating high quality alerts and actionable incidents.

We recommend integrating monitoring services before other integration types so that you can see and manage your events from within the BigPanda interface.

Relevant Permissions

Roles with the following permissions can access the BigPanda Integrations tab:

To learn more about how BigPanda's permissions work, see the Roles Management guide.

Types of Integrations

BigPanda offers several types of integrations:

• Monitoring: allows BigPanda to receive alerts from your monitoring systems, such as Nagios, SolarWinds, and AppDynamics. Many users start by integrating these systems.

• Collaboration: allows you to share incidents from BigPanda with your co-workers through other systems such as Jira or Slack.

• Changes: allows BigPanda to receive change notifications from your change systems, such as CloudTrail, Jenkins, ServiceNow, and Jira.

• Topology: allows you to enrich alerts coming into BigPanda with topology information from configuration management, cloud and virtualization management, service discovery, APM, and CMDB tools.

Agent vs. Webhook Integrations

BigPanda supports both on-premise and SaaS monitoring tools through different mechanisms.

Many on-premise tools are integrated using the BigPanda agent. The agent is a low-footprint utility installed on the master host of your monitoring tool. It consumes alerts from the tool in real time, and then transmits them to BigPanda via SSL-encrypted HTTP calls.

Most SaaS tools (such as CloudWatch or New Relic) are integrated using Webhooks. Whenever the SaaS tool generates an alert, it posts an HTTP message directly to BigPanda. BigPanda listens to incoming messages and processes them.

To learn more about using the agent, see the BigPanda Agent documentation.

Integrate a Tool

Administrators can install any of the standard integrations in BigPanda.

1. Navigate to the Integrations tab.
2. In the left pane, click New Integration.
3. Select or search for the desired integration.

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Finding Integrations

You can filter the list of available integrations by type by selecting the desired type at the top or by entering a search term in the top right. If you don't see the tool you use, consider using the Alerts REST API, Email Parser, or contact your BigPanda Account Manager.

4. Follow the instructions to install and configure your integration. Some configuration in the desired tool may be necessary.

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Open Integration Manager

Some integrations have additional configuration options available through the Open Integration Manager, allowing you to adjust timestamp, status, tag fields and more. The Open Integration Manager will automatically appear as a secondary tab during Integration configuration.

App Keys

The first step in creating a new integration is to generate the app key. The app key is a unique identifier associated with the application. App keys are required for connecting BigPanda to other systems.

When generating the app key, you also select the name for the integration in the UI. When naming an integration, be sure to use a short (max 20 characters), clear name that will be understood across your organization. Keep in mind, some tools may require multiple integrations to support different configurations or subsystems and your name should make it clear which specific element the integration connects to.

Once you are happy with your integration name, click Generate App Key.

BigPanda will create an App Key and internal System ID for the integration. Both may be necessary later during integration installation or configuration, so make note of both.

Time-Based Alert Resolution

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Gradual Rollout

This feature is being gradually rolled out to all BigPanda customers and may not be enabled at your organization yet. If you would like to request to be in the next rollout phase, please contact [email protected]

With Time-Based Alert Resolution, you can set up automatic resolution for orphaned or outstanding alerts to easily reduce noise and help increase MTTR.

Use the Auto-Resolve drop-down menu to select the time period for when alerts are automatically resolved. Alerts that are not updated within the auto-resolve time frame will automatically be resolved.

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The default auto-resolve time is 30 days. When first turning on Time-Based Alert Resolution for an integration, all alerts older than 30 days will be automatically resolved.

The Auto-Resolve time can also be edited after the integration has been created. To edit the Auto-Resolve time, navigate to Settings > Integrations. Find the integration from the list, and click Edit Integration to change the Auto-Resolve time.

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Adjust with Caution

When a shorter time frame is selected, the new auto-resolution rule will apply to all existing alerts from that integration. Any outstanding alerts that meet the new time-rule will immediately be slotted for auto-resolution.

Troubleshoot or Modify an Integration

1. Navigate to the Integrations tab.
2. The Integrations List shows the name and recent activity for each installed integration.

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️ Multiple Integrations For A Single Tool

If you’ve configured multiple integrations for the same tool, each integration is listed separately in the left pane.

2. (Optional) Filter the list by searching for an integration name.

The colored ribbons on the left indicate the status of each integration.

• Orange (Pending): The integration has been configured but no data has been received from it yet. The source system may not have generated alerts yet, or the integration may not be configured correctly.
• Green (Installed): The integration is configured and sending data to BigPanda.

4. Click the desired integration to see more details in the right pane, including App Key, ID, Errors, and more.
5. (Optional) To edit the name of the integration, click Edit Name. This will not change the integration ID, but only the UI name for the Integrations Tab.
6. (Optional) To edit the configuration of the integration, click Review Instructions.

Troubleshoot Errors

The Errors field lists a count of recent event payloads that triggered issues on arrival at BigPanda. Click Troubleshooting to see details on these errors.

Read more about troubleshooting event payloads and integration configurations in the Troubleshoot an Integration documentation.

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Error Details

The Integrations Troubleshooting log only tracks errors that are received by BigPanda. Errors that fail to send or that cannot be parsed by the BigPanda pipeline will not appear in the list.

Error count and details are only maintained for seven days.

Custom Headers

BigPanda allows you to create Custom Headers to specify customized information with your integration. If you have not been granted Administrator access to the integration system, you can modify the integration through custom headers.

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Note

Custom headers take priority over the fields you configure on the Integration page.

See the Custom Headers documentation for more details.

Delete an Integration

Deleting an integration requires changes to both the integrated system and BigPanda. You must uninstall the integration on the integrated system and then delete the integration from BigPanda.

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When replacing an existing integration with a new tool or system, we recommend configuring the new integration first to ensure no data is lost.

Stop Sending Data to BigPanda

On the integrated system, disable any settings that send data to BigPanda.

Manually resolve any open alerts sent from the integration to remove the associated incidents from your incident feed. These incidents will not automatically resolve without an ok status from the original sending integration.

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Each system requires specific changes to disable the integration with BigPanda. For example, you must delete the topic in CloudWatch, and you must disable the alert channel in New Relic. To determine the changes for your integrated system, reference the relevant documentation or contact BigPanda support.

Stop Sending Data from BigPanda

In BigPanda, disable any settings that send data to the integrated system. This includes modifying or removing AutoShare rules or Environments that are tied to the integration.

Delete the Integration from BigPanda

1. In BigPanda, navigate to the Integrations tab and select the desired integration from the list.
2. In the integration details on the right, click Delete Integration. A support message opens, pre-populated with a request to delete the selected integration.
3. Press Enter to send the request.
4. The BigPanda support team will remove the integration from the UI.

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This procedure does not remove any data from BigPanda or the integrated system. As needed, remove data from each system before deleting the integration.

Whitelist Source IPs

To enable outbound integrations with certain collaboration tools, like JIRA and ServiceNow, you may need to whitelist BigPanda IP addresses.

Outbound IPs

BigPanda uses these IP addresses for outbound integrations:

• 54.241.36.213
• 54.241.36.218
• 13.52.206.186
• 54.219.63.225
• 54.236.197.177
• 18.213.73.104
• 52.70.92.71
• 54.151.42.136
• 54.241.83.148

Add these IP addresses to your firewall rules to allow BigPanda to create tickets and share updates with the respective systems.

Inbound IPs

At this time, BigPanda does not have dedicated IP addresses for sending data to BigPanda, but instead leverages an AWS IP block.

The IP addresses for our API endpoints could change at any time to an address within AWS's IP block. You can find an up-to-date list of AWS IPs here.

Updates

• July 16, 2021: New IP Added 54.241.83.148. Protocol: https
• May 11, 2021: New IP Added 54.151.42.136. Protocol: https

Next Steps

Find your way around the Integrations Tab

Learn how to Troubleshoot an Integration

View a list of BigPanda's Standard Integrations

Learn about the Data Engineering process in the BigPanda University Data Engineering Learning Path.