Using flag triggers with Dynatrace

Overview

This guide explains how to create flag triggers and integrate them with Dynatrace. Dynatrace is an infrastructure monitoring platform that offers application performance management (APM) and automated problem remediation.

You can use flag triggers to automate flag changes. For example, you can create an alert in Dynatrace that uses a LaunchDarkly trigger to toggle flag targeting on or off when Dynatrace triggers a predefined or custom event.

Integrating flag triggers with Dynatrace requires two steps:

1. Creating a flag trigger
2. Connecting a LaunchDarkly trigger to Dynatrace

Prerequisites

To complete this guide, you must have the following prerequisites:

• You must have a Pro or Enterprise LaunchDarkly account.
• You must have a Writer role or custom role with permission to edit flag triggers.
• You must have access to trigger URLs. To learn more about accessing trigger URLs, read Understanding flag triggers' security.
• You must have an existing Dynatrace account.

Concepts

To use the Dynatrace trigger integration, you must understand the following concepts.

Flag triggers

Flag triggers let you initiate flag changes remotely using a unique webhook URL. Triggers integrate with your existing tools to let you enable or disable flags when you hit specific operational health thresholds or receive certain alerts. Triggers work by creating unique URLs to connect feature flags to third-party tools. When the third-party tool generates a specific alert, the trigger sets the flag's targeting to on or off. To learn more, read Flag triggers.

Creating a flag trigger

You can create triggers for individual feature flags from the flag's Settings page.

To create a trigger:

1. From the flags list, click the name of the flag you want to create a trigger for.
2. Click the Settings tab.
3. Find the "Triggers for [Environment Name]" section and click Add trigger. The "Create trigger" dialog box appears:

3. Choose "Dynatrace" from the Trigger type menu.
4. Choose an action you wish to perform with the trigger from the Action menu.
5. Click Save Trigger. A confirmation appears and the trigger appears in the flag's Settings page.
6. Copy and save the unique trigger URL. You must do this now. After you leave this page, the trigger URL will be obscured and you will not be able to view it again:

You just created a new trigger for your flag. You can create more triggers if necessary by clicking Add trigger.

Connecting a LaunchDarkly trigger to Dynatrace

To configure a LaunchDarkly trigger in Dynatrace, you must perform two steps:

1. Create an alerting profile in Dynatrace to determine what Dynatrace events you want associated with your trigger, and
2. Create a webhook in Dynatrace that includes a custom JSON template that specifies your trigger URL and alerting profile.

Creating a custom alerting profile in Dynatrace

To create a custom alerting profile:

1. Log in to Dynatrace.
2. Create a new alerting profile that filters for the specific events you want to be associated with your LaunchDarkly trigger. To learn more, read Dynatrace's Alerting profiles documentation.
3. Give the alerting profile a human-readable name.
4. Click Done in the top right-hand corner of the page.

Creating a webhook in Dynatrace with a JSON template

To display event details associated with the invocation of a LaunchDarkly trigger, you must configure a JSON template when you set up the webhook in Dynatrace.

To configure the template:

1. Create a new webhook in Dynatrace. To learn how, read Dynatrace's Webhook integration documentation.

2. Paste the LaunchDarkly trigger URL into the Webhook URL field.

3. Copy this payload into the Custom payload field in Dynatrace:

   JSON

   {
   "title":"{ProblemTitle}",
   "url": "{ProblemURL}"
   }
   COPY

4. Select your pre-configured alerting profile from the Alerting profile menu.
5. Click Send test notification. If the integration was successful, a "Custom Integration test successful" message appears.
6. Return to the LaunchDarkly flag's Settings page and verify that the test notification has arrived. To do this, click on the trigger's overflow menu confirm that the execution count has incremented.
7. Return to Dynatrace and click Save changes.

Your new Dynatrace webhook now triggers flag changes based on the action you specified in LaunchDarkly.

For more granular problem detection and alerting, you may want to explore static thresholds in Dynatrace’s custom alerting settings. To learn more, read Dynatrace's Static thresholds documentation.

For another example of how you can use flag triggers with APM tools, read Automating application performance management.