OpenNMS SMS & voice call notifications – integration manual

Here we describe how to setup OpenNMS with SMSEagle for SMS notifications.

SMSEagle is an offline hardware SMS gateway. Therefore no external connection to 3rd party system is required. All notifications are generated on-premise and sent directly to a cellular network. This solution can be used in secure installations without Internet access.

SMSEagle Setup

This integration will use Email To SMS plugin (see details: Email To SMS plugin). This plugin is included in each version of SMSEagle device.
- Enable Email To SMS plugin in web-GUI > menu Emails > Email to SMS > Settings tab.
- Create a forwarding rule in the Rules tab. You can forward all emails to SMS or emails from specific domains.

OpenNMS Setup

Create a User
Click the Admin link in the menu bar, go to Configure Users, Groups and On-Call Roles, and then click Configure Users.
Then, click the Add New User link, and enter a username and password in the form, then click OK. Next, fill out the relevant user information.
Finally, click Finish down at the bottom of the form.

Destination Paths
To receive a notification, your user or a group that your user is in needs to be a part of a destination path. A destination path helps OpenNMS determine who is eligible to receive a particular notification, depending on user name, groups, duty schedules, and other rules.
Go to the Admin page, click Configure Notifications in the Operations section, then Configure Destination Paths, then click the New Path button.
Give it a name, like SMS, then click Edit. Add your new user by selecting it, then click Next >>>.

On the next page, leave the defaults (javaEmail and on) and click Next >>> again.

Finally, click Finish and you should see your new tutorial path in the Existing Paths section.

Event Notifications
Go to the Admin page, click Configure Notifications in the Operations section, then Configure Event Notifications. In here you ‘ll see a list of events which are configured for notifications, some of which are turned off. You can create a new event notification by clicking the Add New Event Notification> button near the top.
Click the Add New Event Notification button at the top of the Event Notifications page. From Events choose OpenNMS-defined internal event: an authentication failure has occurred in WebUI.

Then click Next >>>.

On the next page, you can build a rule for matching a set of IP addresses and/or services. In this case, we’re just matching an internal OpenNMS event, so we’ll continue on and click Skip results validation >>>.
Finally, you can configure the information used to send the notification. Fill in the following values:

Name
authenticationFailed
Choose A Path
Tutorial
Text Message
The OpenNMS Web UI had a failed login attempt, by user ‘%parm[user]%’, from IP address %parm[ip]% (Exception message: %parm[exceptionMessage]%)
Short Message
Authentication failed by user %parm[user]% (Notice #%noticeid%)
Email Subject Authentication Failed (Notice #%noticeid%)

And then click Finish.

You should now see your notification event in the list, but it will be disabled. Set the radio button to On to enable it, and you should be ready to send a notification.

Configure Mail

Unless you have an SMTP server running on your OpenNMS host, you will need to configure mail before notifications will work. Mail configuration for notifications is in the $OPENNMS_HOME/etc/javamail-configuration.properties file. In most cases, you should only have to change a few lines to point it at your mail server:

# This is the e-mail address that OpenNMS puts in the “From” field:
org.opennms.core.utils.fromAddress=FROM-EMAIL-ADDRESS
org.opennms.core.utils.mailHost=MAIL-SERVER-IP

Also, if your mail server requires authentication for sending, see the section under “These properties define the Mail authentication.” and edit them as appropriate for your environment.

Enable Notifications

By default, OpenNMS ships with notifications disabled, so you don’t get them accidentally as you’re just setting things up. The last thing you need to do once you have things configured as you like is to enable notifications.
In the main OpenNMS Admin page, there is a radio selector labeled, Notification Status. Change it to On and click update.

SMSEagle as SMTP Server (optional)

For sending e-mail messages you can use SMTP server installed on the SMSEagle device. Then the configuration of SMTP server is as follows:

SMTP host: IP address of your device
SMTP port: 25
Authentication: SMSEagle SMTP server doesn’t require authentication
Encryption: none

SMTP server on the SMSEagle device will accept messages addressed for it only. The other messages will be rejected.

Wake-up Calls & Text-to-speech Calls (optional)

SMSEagle device can be equipped with an additional voice feature that offers wake-up calls for urgent ring-only alerts or text-to-speech calls to convert text alerts into voice calls. Complete the following steps if you want to add a follow-up voice call:

in SMSEagle webGUI > menu Emails > Email to SMS edit the forwarding rule you created earlier
in the parameter “Call after sending SMS” choose a desired value:
- Yes – ring only: SMS will be followed with a wake-up (ring only) call
- Yes – text to speech: SMS will be followed with a simple text-to-speech voice call (English language only)
- Yes – text to speech (advanced): SMS will be followed with a text-to-speech voice call (better quality & multiple language support)

Notice: Wake-up Calls and Text-to-Speech Calls are only available to users who have purchased the VOICE add-on for their SMSEagle device.

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