Spinnaker Notifications in Google Hangouts Chat
Tags: spinnaker, cicd, hangouts, chat
Published: 2019-01-10 22:54:57

---
title: Spinnaker Notifications in Google Hangouts Chat
published: true
description: Learn how to configure Google Hangouts 
tags: spinnaker, ci/cd,hangouts, chat
---

A couple of weeks ago I started building out some Spinnaker pipelines that I wanted to make sure caught my attention if they failed for some reason. When looking at the Spinnaker drop down for possible notifications I was pleasantly surprised to see [Google Hangouts Chat](https://gsuite.google.com/products/chat/) as an option since it is my primary chat for working hours. 

![HangoutsChat drop down](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/otf9zpa2dh1lwcf1c1b8.png)

While I was already able to do email notifications, I was interested in getting notifications into Google Hangouts Chat so that I could send them to one of our rooms rather than a mailing list or an individual.

Next, I tried to figure out what I would need to configure for these notifications to get fired off. I looked into the Spinnaker docs but didn't find anything related to this integration. Upon perusing the code of [echo](https://github.com/spinnaker/echo), the Spinnaker component in charge of notifications, I stumbled on [a property](https://github.com/spinnaker/echo/blob/0c19f490bb10ea235e4e557340a1640c18e2cffa/echo-notifications/src/main/groovy/com/netflix/spinnaker/echo/config/GoogleChatConfig.groovy#L34) that needed to be set. I went about finding where that property could be configured. 

My Spinnaker install was setup by [Halyard](https://www.spinnaker.io/reference/halyard/), the de-facto tool for managing Spinnaker installations. Unfortunately, Halyard did not yet have the command I needed to enable the Google Hangouts Chat integration so I had to dive into the config files to edit them manually.

I went over to the [Custom Configuration docs](https://www.spinnaker.io/reference/halyard/custom/#custom-service-settings) to remind myself where I need to add my changes. I then created my `echo-local.yaml` file with the following:

```yaml
googlechat:
  enabled: true
```

After a `hal deploy apply` to update my installation with that change, Chat was enabled but not yet fully configured. I needed to tell Spinnaker when and where to send its notifications.

I went over to my favorite pipeline to find out what I would need to configure for it to send notifications to a particular Chat room. I was presented with the following settings:

![GoogleChat settings](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/2tx9zw7cqwro763qbzi1.png)

The only thing I needed to provide was the link to my "Chat Webhook URL". To find this I needed to go to the room that I had created and then click on "Configure webhooks":

![configure webhooks drop down](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/lnlz7y5sg4sur5etdvwp.png)

I was then able to create a new webhook with and then copy my Webhook URL into the Spinnaker notification dialog. Once it was all configured I started receiving my notifications that looked like this:

![spinnaker notification](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/4p3mcxhramxw3524yxvl.png)

Next up, submitting a PR to the Spinnaker docs.