Many users are creating very powerful sequences using the custom webhook trigger. This feature allows you to trigger a sequence from another service via a webhook request, and you can even pass through JSON data. People are using this to trigger sequences from events on their Emby media server or based on weather updates.
In the past month there have been two important updates to this feature.
To help debug sequences, it’s now possible to view the content of the payload which was sent to SEQUEmatic in the webhook call. Head to your sequence log and click the magnifying glass to view the detailed log of that sequence run.
Next to the trigger step you’ll see a link to ‘view the payload’ which will display the JSON which SEQUEmatic received. Note that this is only available for custom webhook requests which pass a JSON payload.
The key benefit of using the custom webhook trigger is the ability to pass additional data into SEQUEmatic. In the case of the Emby media server this could be the playback event or film title. In the case of a weather service it could be the current temperature or upcoming forecast.
SEQUEmatic allows you to access this data in your sequence using sequence parameters. Take a look at the JSON below:
Perhaps this payload is sent to SEQUEmatic every time a student walks through the door at Hogwarts. It provides information including their name and house. When this comes through into SEQUEmatic, you can access the data by enclosing the variable names in curly brackets, for example {House} to get the value Gryffindor.
Now, you can also get the value of second (and third, fourth, fifth, etc) level variables by connecting their names with a hyphen, such as {Student-FirstName} to get the value Harry.
This can be used in most steps which take text inputs, for example in checking a variable value, in the content of an email alert or stored in a variable for use in another sequence, as in the example below.
You can read more about this in the docs.
So, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and see what you can create with the custom webhook trigger. I’d love to hear how you’re using this in the comments below, and as always if you have any questions just ask in the Q&A Forum or contact me directly.
