# Integration Guide: Sending Cumulocity IoT Alarms to Zendesk & Twilio using n8n

**URL:** <https://community.cumulocity.com/t/integration-guide-sending-cumulocity-iot-alarms-to-zendesk-twilio-using-n8n/7638>\
**Category:** Knowledge Base\
**Tags:** integration, No-Code, Trouble-Ticket, Streaming-Analytics-Apama, Twilio, Zendesk, SMS, streaming-analytics, cumulocity\
**Created:** [December 11, 2023, 12:40pm UTC](https://community.cumulocity.com/t/integration-guide-sending-cumulocity-iot-alarms-to-zendesk-twilio-using-n8n/7638 "2023-12-11T12:40:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Tamer\_Mazen](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/community.cumulocity.com/tamer_mazen/32/19456_2.png) [@Tamer\_Mazen](https://community.cumulocity.com/u/Tamer_Mazen)\
**Post date:** [December 11, 2023, 12:40pm UTC](https://community.cumulocity.com/t/integration-guide-sending-cumulocity-iot-alarms-to-zendesk-twilio-using-n8n/7638/1 "2023-12-11T12:40:50Z")

</div>

## Use Case

Let’s imagine we work for a company called “SAG Demo”, which is using Cumulocity IoT to manage several field devices. For simplicity let’s assume we have one device registered in our Cumulocity IoT tenant. This device sends alarms with different severities when certain conditions are met. The alarms are important for our service technicians as they need to act. Therefore we would like to create a Zendesk Ticket, whenever an alarm is created. Also, we would like to send an SMS to a certain mobile number of our service technician, using an SMS provider “Twilio”, if the alarm severity is CRITICAL.

### Solution Design in Cumulocity IoT

This use case can be addressed by implementing logic in [Cumulocity IoT EPL Apps](https://cumulocity.com/guides/streaming-analytics/epl-apps/) that processes device alarms. When an alarm is triggered, this EPL App can call the Zendesk API to generate a ticket as well and when the alarm severity is critical initiate a call to the Twilio API for SMS alerts.

As EPL Apps is a pro-code environment, to implement this logic a decent technical background is beneficial, and you would have to maintain the integration points with Zendesk and Twilio.

Now with minimum or no technical background, you can easily implement the same use case in 2 hours, all you have to know is how to use [Cumulocity IoT Analytics Builder](https://cumulocity.com/guides/streaming-analytics/analytics-builder/).

It is worth mentioning that, starting with release 10.17, Cumulocity IoT supports seamless integration with Twilio for SMS sending. However, the no-code approach mentioned in this guide can be applied with any other SMS provider, which does not have direct integration with Cumulocity IoT.

The following sections will illustrate how you can implement this use case with the No-Code approach, using [n8n Platform](https://n8n.io/).

## n8n - Workflow automation tool

n8n (pronounced n-eight-n) helps you to connect any app with an API with any other, and manipulate its data with little or no code.

n8n allows you to build flexible workflows focused on deep data integration. And with sharable templates and a user-friendly UI, the less technical people on your team can collaborate on them too.

n8n offers the following:

- **Code when you need, no code when you don’t** : Connect APIs with no code to automate basic tasks. Or write vanilla JavaScript when you need to manipulate complex data.

- **Build custom scenarios at speed** : You can implement multiple triggers. Branch and merge your workflows and even pause flows to wait for external events.

- **Integrate with any app** : Interface easily with any API or service with custom HTTP requests.

- **Independent instances for each environment** : Avoid breaking live workflows by separating dev and prod environments with unique sets of auth data.

- **350+ native integrations** : Connect to all your favorite apps. Or write your own integration with a general connector to the rest.

- **Bulk operations** : n8n nodes let you process data at scale with a built-in iteration functionality in every node.

- **Painless debugging** : See the execution data of every workflow. Integrate error nodes into workflows to catch errors and rerun individual nodes to test fixes quickly.

- **Host on your own infrastructure** : Fully on-prem for those that need the security.

The scope of this integration guide is to illustrate how you can use n8n to integrate Cumulocity IoT with the Zendesk Platform & Twilio SMS Provider, with a no-code approach.

## Step-by-Step Guide

### Prerequisites

This Integration guide is based on the following assumptions:

- Cumulocity IoT Release 10.18.
- To call n8n workflow from Analytics Builder, you will need to add a custom block “Webhook” to the list of Analytics Builder Blocks. Please check the following link to install the custom block to Analytics Builder of your Cumulocity IoT tenant:

> **[GitHub - Cumulocity-IoT/analytics-builder-blocks-contrib: Unsupported, not productized blocks for use with...](https://github.com/Cumulocity-IoT/analytics-builder-blocks-contrib)**
>
> Unsupported, not productized blocks for use with Apama Analytics Builder

- 1 device sending alarms to Cumulocity IoT
- Existing account on [n8n](https://n8n.io/)
- Existing account on [Zendesk](https://www.zendesk.de/)
- Existing account on [Twilio](https://www.twilio.com/en-us)

### Device sends an Alarm

The trigger of this use case is an alarm sent from a device registered in Cumulocity IoT.

You can use a real device to send such an alarm or you can use Postman or CURL or any other tool to simulate a device sending an alarm to Cumulocity

To send a critical alarm you can use the following:

```auto
POST <Tenant URL>/alarm/alarms 
{ 
    "source": { 
        "id" : "<Device Cumulocity ID>" 
        }, 
        "type". : "TemperatureAlarm", 
        "text". : "Temperature is High", 
        "severity" : "CRITICAL", 
        "status". : "ACTIVE", 
        "time" : "2023-11-15T09:44:27.845Z" 
} 

```

Feel free to set alarm’s type, text, time and severity as you wish.

> **Please note** that the severity must match one of the allowed values `CRITICIAL`, `MINOR`, `MAJOR`, `WARNING`

### Cumulocity IoT Analytics Builder Model

The device will send alarms to Cumulocity IoT, so we need to implement an Analytics Builder Model, where it will listen to alarms coming from the device, build payload and fire n8n workflow to start integration with Zendesk & Twilio.

Following is how the final layout of the Analytics Builder model should look like and in the following steps we will illustrate each block in the model.

 ![image2](https://europe1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/uploads/cumulocity/original/3X/2/9/294ef87921c6486e7e724b752fb6381fad16737f.jpeg)

1. This is an Alarm Input block to catch new alarms from device.

2. This is a Managed Object Input block for the same device. It is used only to get the device name, the model will not fire to changes in the device name, as we will explain in step 6.

3. This is Extract block to extract alarm’s severity from the raised alarm.

4. This is Extract block to extract alarm’s text from the raised alarm.

5. This is an Expression block to build payload which will be sent to n8n webhook. The expression is as following:

6. This is a Gate block which is used to allow the model to call n8n webhook only in case of alarm is raised.

7. This is the custom HTTP Webhook block which is used to a call n8n cloud webhook.

### Zendesk Configuration

For n8n Platform integration with Zendesk, you have to establish a connection from n8n towards Zendesk, and part of the required connection’s settings is Zendesk API Token.

In the following steps, we will show you how you can create the required Zendesk API Token.

1. Log in to your account on Zendesk using this URL `https://<YourSubDomain>.zendesk.com/` , and replace `<YourSubDomain>`, with the one you have created during the registration process.

2. On the Top right corner, open the user profile sub-menu, and click View Profile.

3. In the Profile Page, click on **Manage in Admin Center** link, which will open in a new tab.

4. In Admin Center page, expand **Apps and integrations** sub menu, and click **Zendesk API** menu item.

5. In the API Token page, click **Add API Token** button, which will redirect to the new page.

### Twilio Configuration

Twilio only send SMS to verified mobile numbers, so you have to add the mobile number that will receive SMS in our use case to the list of verified Caller ID in Twilio, which will be shown in the following steps:

1. Log in to your account on [Twilio](https://www.twilio.com/en-us).

2. Check out the **Develop** Tab in the left menu, and expand **Manage** sub Item.

3. Click on **Verified Caller IDs** link and a new page will be opened as follows.

4. Click **Add a new Caller ID** button, a popup window will be shown, enter **your number** and click the **Verify number** button.

5. Once your number is verified, it will be added to **Verified Caller ID** list.

In next section [n8n Workflow](#toc-h3-n8n-workflow), you will configure the Twilio node. To do so you will need to set an account SID, auth token and your Twilio phone number. Following are steps to get those parameters.

1. Log in to your account on [Twilio](https://www.twilio.com/en-us).

2. Go down to **Account Info** section, have a copy of **Account SID** , **Auth Token** and **My Twilio phone number** , as you will use them when you configure the Twilio node in n8n workflow.

### n8n Workflow

1. Log in to your [n8n](https://n8n.io/) account.

2. Click the **Add workflow** button.

3. A new workflow editor will be opened.

4. Set workflow name to `Cumulocity_Zendesk_Twilio_Integration`, or set it to any other name of your choice.

5. Click the **+** Add first step.

6. A side menu will be shown on the right.

7. Search for `webhook` node, and select the Webhook trigger.

8. A new pop-up window will be opened to set the webhook node configuration.

9. As shown in the previous screenshot, n8n Platform has created two URLs for the workflow, the first one is for testing during configuring the workflow “Test URL”, and the later one is used for Production “Production URL”, and it is used when you activate the workflow

10. Now set the webhook node configuration as follows:

11. When you click the **Save** button, **Credential for Basic Auth** will be populated with `n8n_cred`.

12. For HTTP method choose **POST**.

13. For **Path** , you can set your own path, in our case I will leave the default value.

14. For **Respond** choose `When Last Node Finishes`.

15. For **Response Code** leave default value to 200

16. For **Response Data** choose `All Entries`

17. Click the **Add Option** , and select `Row Body` and set it to **ON**.

18. The configuration should be as following now:

19. Click **Back to Canvas** on the top left.

20. Now we will test the webhook node using the Test URL.

21. If you have similar output from the previous step, you can consider that n8n webhook node is configured in the workflow.

22. Now, we need to extract the Cumulocity IoT payload from the value property of the original JSON payload, and to do that, we have to add a new code node and connect it to the output of the webhook node.

23. On the output of the webhook node, click the **+** icon which will open a window to choose the next node.

24. In the search box, write `code` and select the **Code** node.

25. With a **Code** node you can write down JavaScript or Python code to process the output of the previous node, which is the webhook node in our case. Also, the **Code** node gives you the ability to use AI to generate the required code in JavaScript or Python.

26. To comply with the no-code approach in this guideline, we did the following:  
a. We asked AI to extract the value of “body.value” property in the JSON Payload, by using the following prompt `parse json of item.json.body.value.value`, then click **Generate Code** button.

27. Back to the canvas again, and click **+** icon on the output of the Code node to choose the next node.

28. In the search box, write `zendesk` and select the **Zendesk** node.

29. Then select **Create Ticket Action**.

30. A configuration window for the Zendesk node will be opened. You will notice that the output of the previous node appears on the left side as input to **Zendesk** node.

31. We are done with the first part of the use case by creating a Zendesk ticket whenever an Alarm is created.

32. Now we need to add a condition to send an SMS to a certain mobile if the alarm severity is CRITICAL severity.

33. Click **+** icon on the output of the Zendesk node to choose the next node.

34. In the search box, write `if` and select the **IF** node.

35. In the configuration of **IF** node do the following:

36. **IF** node has two outputs, the first one is when the condition evaluates to `true`, and the latter is when the condition evaluates to `false`.

37. For `false` evaluation Output click **+** icon on the output of the node to choose the next node.

38. In the search box, write `No operation` and select the **No operation, do nothing** node.

39. Click the **Save** button.

40. For `true` evaluation Output click **+** icon on the output of the node to choose the next node.

41. In the search box, write `twilio` and select the **Twilio** node.

42. Then select **Send an SMS/MMS/WhatsApp message**.

43. Then the configuration window for the Twilio node will be opened. You will notice that the output of the previous node appears on the left side as input to **IF** node.

44. The final use case workflow should look like this.

45. Now and before activating the workflow, make sure to use the Production URL of n8n webhook in Analytics Builder Webhook block.

46. Activate n8n workflow.

Congratulations! You finished this guide and created an integration to Zendesk & Twilio using the n8n Integration Platform and Cumulocity IoT Analytics Builder.

## n8n Installation Options

n8n has multiple installation options:

- Cloud
- Enterprise self-hosted
- Community self-hosted

You can install the self-hosted options using npm or Docker.

For more information please check the following links:  
[Self-hosting n8n](https://docs.n8n.io/hosting/?_gl=1*v7tkut*_ga*MTE0ODg2MjU4LjE2OTcxMTY5Mjc.*_ga_0SC4FF2FH9*MTcwMDIxOTgwNS4yOC4xLjE3MDAyMTk4NTQuMTEuMC4w)  
[n8n Community Edition](https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n)