What are webhooks in the workflow automation?

This article is part of the Insightly Automation Guide

Webhooks are a method of sending information from Insightly to an application outside of Insightly. They can be sent through workflow automation actions when a record is added or updated.

Like our API, working with webhooks is recommended for users familiar with custom coding. You will need to work with your technical staff or a developer if you don't have programming knowledge.

In more technical terms: A webhook is a mechanism for sending notifications using HTTP POST callbacks. For instance, you can set up a workflow to watch for new contacts in a certain region. When a new contact meets your criteria, Insightly will send the contact's information in the webhook to a URL that you've specified.

Insightly's webhooks use Basic authentication, so you can pass through base64-encoded usernames and passwords.

Adding a webhook to a workflow

When you set up a workflow, webhooks are one of the actions you can choose from when a workflow is triggered.

When you select Add New Webhook as an action, you will enter a name describing the webhook and the URI that you would like Insightly to POST information to every time the workflow event happens.

To preview what Insightly's webhook events will look like after they’re sent, create a test URL with Request Bin. and enter that into this field.

The POST will contain a collection of Field IDs from the record paired with the values of each field. Here is an example for a task:

"entity": { "TASK_ID": 99922875, "TITLE": "New Lead Task", "CATEGORY_ID": 9998895, "DUE_DATE": "/Date(1489132800000-0800)/", "PUBLICLY_VISIBLE": true, "COMPLETED": false, "DETAILS": "", "STATUS": "NOT STARTED", "PRIORITY": 2, "PERCENT_COMPLETE": 0, "OWNER_VISIBLE": false, "RESPONSIBLE_USER_ID": 999308, "OWNER_USER_ID": 999308, "DATE_CREATED_UTC": "/Date(1489116850787-0800)/", "DATE_UPDATED_UTC": "/Date(1489116850787-0800)/", "REMINDER_SENT": false, "TASKLINKS": [] }

Other record types and fields are available in our API documentation. For more information on how to set up a Webhook, please refer this video.

You can set up a callback URL in your application or integration that will accept the HTTP POST and process the data Insightly sends over, or you can use a service like Zapier, which will accept webhooks and take additional actions in other systems that it's connected to.

If there is no positive acknowledgement when Insightly sends out the webhook, the system will try two more times and then stop attempting to send.

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