If you’ve explored the different tabs of InControl’s interface, you may have come across “Pushover Notifications” under the “Settings” and “Notifications” tabs. This time, Tell Me Why covers why our team integrated a third-party app with InControl.
###What’s Pushover?
Pushover is an external application dedicated to pushing notifications to user devices. Available for Android, iOS, and desktop browsers, Pushover’s API can be easily integrated into various web apps, shell scripts, and so on. The app comes with a 30-day free trial, then a one-time in-app purchase for each platform used.
(Interface images from pushover.net)
While Pushover has a simple interface, it features easy-to-use functions that system and network administrators can work with to generate highly customized notifications. The app features more advanced settings such as notification priority, with high-priority events even bypassing “Do Not Disturb” settings.
###Why use Pushover with InControl?
While one can point to the email notifications from InControl, Pushover’s additional functionality can push notifications directly to a mobile phone.
A Peplink engineer has been using Pushover for personal use over the span of a few years. He has customized and categorized different notifications according to his needs. For instance, this engineer integrated Pushover’s API with InControl servers he was working on. When an application exception is thrown or when a server hiccups, he instantly receives high-priority notifications that recurred until the issue had been resolved.
When asked about using InControl’s email notifications, our engineer finds that he is unable to check emails frequently and may not identify an urgent issue. Using Pushover, he’s informed through the mobile notifications if the issue requires immediate attention or can be resolved at a later time.
After Pushover was mentioned in a discussion with one of our forum engineers, it was discovered that this app is used by many InControl users. This then led to the idea of integrating Pushover with InControl to serve those who face a similar situation.
Users can now use the Pushover app with InControl to customize notifications and set specific rules. Additionally, they can categorize possible issues into different alert levels by just simply adding Pushover’s API into InControl. They can also customize the notification sound too.
Another example is that users can set an event’s priority to “Emergency”. In this case, notifications will repeat in a defined retry interval. They will stop only if they acknowledge the event on their mobile or watch, OR the offline/down event has become online/up, OR the notifications have been sent for more than a predefined duration.
Pushover being integrated in InControl is just one of the several results of Peplink engineers listening to the community, and the application-friendly interface of InControl. If you’re interested in setting this up on InControl, you can refer to the image below.
The image below shows the notification customization options.
