Creating an agent | Tines docs

In the previous article we introduced the simple story. In this article we will expand that story by adding an additional agent.

In the simple story, we created an automation story that sends a HTTP POST request when an alert is related to an infection and the affected user’s job is CEO. In this article we will expand the story by sending an email when the user’s job is “engineer”.

Creating an email agent

On the storyboard page, drag an email agent from the library panel and drop it onto the storyboard.

Setting the source agent

Next we need to define from where our new email agent should receive events. We do this by stringing them together. From the icon on the User is engineer agent, drag the string into the new Email agent agent.

Configuring the agent

On the right hand side of the storyboard page is the Agent Properties Panel. Here we can configure how the agent should perform.

Editing the options block

In the options block, at the bottom of the properties panel, we will configure the granular operation of the agent. For an Email Agent, there are a number of options we can specify:

recipients: Include an email address (or an array of email addresses) to whom the email should be sent. Each recipient will receive an individual email.
subject: Include a subject for the email. Include information from upstream events by specifying the key.
body: (Optional) Customize the body of the email. Include information from upstream events by specifying the JSONPath (examples below). The body can contain simple HTML and will be sanitized. When using body, it will be wrapped with <html> and <body> tags, so these do not need to be added.

For our Email agent we will use the following options block:

{
  "recipients": "tinesdemouser@outlook.com",
  "subject": "Engineer in infected",
  "body": "Hello,<br/><br/>An alert has been detected that relates to an infected engineer. The user's details are shown below:<br/><b>Name:</b> {{.explode_users.user.name}}<br/><b>Age:</b> {{.explode_users.user.age}}<br/><b>Country:</b> {{.explode_users.user.country}}<br/><br/>Thanks!"
}

Note: The body field in the Email Agent’s options block supports HTML. As such, we can use tags such as <b>, <i>, <br/>, etc.

API Autocomplete

When editing or creating an agent, ‘API Autocomplete’ allows you to more easily define JSONPaths in the options block. When a source agent is defined and two sets of curly braces are entered into a field with a period, ({{ . }} ), Tines will provide a list of available keys from the most recent event emitted by the defined source agent. When a key is selected and another period is pressed, Tines will present the keys from the most recent event at that level.

Testing the Agent

There is now a new agent ready to receive events from the “User is engineer” agent (shown below).

To test that this agent is working as expected, we can “reemit” an event from the “User is engineer” events page.

Note: Remitting an event will force the agent to emit a duplicate of the event to all agents configured to receive events from it.

Viewing the events emitted by our new “Notify by email” Agent, we can see the agent ran and successfully emitted an event similar the below. The corresponding email is also shown below.