Do webhooks help with automation?Solved

Hey, you’re on the right track exploring webhooks. Think of them as lightweight event-driven alerts. When one app triggers a defined event, it sends an HTTP POST to another app, instantly, without waiting or polling. That’s faster and more efficient.  

When a device encounters an issue, a ticket is raised in your ticketing system. This event must then be synced with your source server. Your ticketing platform can send a webhook to your source server (the destination) with the issue details. No polling, just instant delivery. In developer terms, your system exposes a webhook endpoint (a URL) and the ticketing system POSTs to it when that event happens. 

Will save you from the overhead of periodic checks and delays, real-time is the way to go.

That sounds promising. I’m wondering about specifics:

1. What security should I add to this endpoint?
2. How to avoid getting duplicate notifications?
3. And if we get swamped with events, how does the endpoint handle high volume or failures?

@roosevelt, your concerns are valid. Let me break down the answers for you based on my perspective. 

1. Security  

   The best practice is to verify that incoming webhook requests are genuine. Use HMAC signatures or shared secrets to validate payload integrity, or even mTLS. Many major platforms require signing the payload. 

2. Deduplication (Idempotency)  

   Webhooks often follow an “at-least-once” delivery model, meaning duplicates may happen. Design your processing to be idempotent, e.g. use unique event IDs and ignore events you’ve already handled. 

3. Throughput & Reliability  
   Your webhook endpoint should respond fast, within a few seconds, with a simple HTTP 200 OK and queue heavy processing for later. This protects against timeouts and overloads. Use queues or event-driven pipelines to process data asynchronously. 

@roosevelt , this setup gives you real-time automation with the reliability and security a production environment needs. These configurations can be varied based on your requirements. Let me know about your experiences.  

Cheers mate.