Zabbix

The Zabbix integration brings your monitoring into the conversation. Once an admin connects it:

• Problems from your Zabbix triggers post into the channel you pick, as one card per problem, with its severity, host, value and tags.
• The same card stays current. When someone acknowledges or comments in Zabbix, the card says who and what. When the problem is resolved, the card turns green and says how long it lasted, and a reply under it lets everyone following the thread know.
• Acknowledge and Close problem buttons on the card act in Zabbix, when you give Freesbe an API token. Zabbix records who pressed them.
• A live problems board pinned in the channel lists everything open right now, worst first.
• /zabbix shows what’s open, a host’s health, and a report, and answers questions like how was CPU on db-01 this week? with AI.
• Reports post on their own every morning or every Monday.

Zabbix posts as its own member, Zabbix, so its cards are easy to tell apart from people. It works with Zabbix 6.0 and later, on your own servers or in the cloud.

Connect Zabbix

Only owners and admins can connect it. You need a Zabbix administrator for the steps in Zabbix.

1. Open Workspace settings → Integrations & apps → Integrations → Monitoring and click Connect under Zabbix.
2. Give the connection a name, like Production Zabbix, and pick the channel it posts to.
3. Pick which problems to post under Problems to post. Warning and up is a good start; High and up keeps a busy channel quiet.
4. For the buttons, fill in Zabbix address and API token (see Acknowledge and close from the card). You can add them later.
5. Click Connect Zabbix. Freesbe shows the Freesbe URL that Zabbix sends problems to. Copy it now: it’s only shown once.

Then, in Zabbix:

1. Click Download media type (or get it from freesbe.net/downloads/zabbix/media_freesbe.yaml), and import it in Alerts → Media types → Import. It adds a media type called Freesbe.
2. Open the user Zabbix should send as, in Users → Users. Many teams make a user called Freesbe that can read the hosts they want alerts about. On its Media tab, add the Freesbe media type and paste the Freesbe URL in Send to.
3. In Alerts → Actions → Trigger actions, make an action (or open one you have) and send to that user on the Operations, Recovery operations and Update operations tabs. The recovery and update operations are what keep the card current.
4. Back in Freesbe, open the connection’s ⋯ menu and click Send a test alert to see a card in the channel. Real problems show up as Zabbix sends them.

To post different problems to different channels, connect Zabbix again with another channel, and give each URL to its own user (or its own media on one user) with the action conditions you want, such as a host group or a tag.

Set the global macro {$ZABBIX.URL} in Zabbix (Administration → Macros) to your frontend’s address if you don’t fill in Zabbix address in Freesbe: cards then link to each problem.

The cards

Each card shows:

• The severity, with Zabbix’s own names: 🔵 Information, 🟡 Warning, 🟠 Average, 🔴 High and 🚨 Disaster, and whether it’s open, acknowledged or resolved.
• The problem’s name, linked to the problem in Zabbix, the host, and its value (Zabbix’s operational data, like Free: 6.4 %).
• Its tags, and the latest update from Zabbix, like Tom Becker acknowledged, commented: Rotating the order export logs now.
• Acknowledge, Close problem and Open in Zabbix buttons.

Updates and recoveries always follow their problem, whatever the severity filter, so a card never stays red after Zabbix resolves it. A recovery for a problem Freesbe never posted (one below the filter, or from before you connected) is skipped. If Zabbix sends the same problem twice, it’s posted once.

Turn off Reply when a problem is resolved in the connection’s settings if you’d rather the card change color quietly.

Acknowledge and close from the card

With an API token, everyone in the channel can press Acknowledge or Close problem on a card. Freesbe does it in Zabbix with a message saying who pressed it (Acknowledged from Freesbe by Maya Chen), and the card changes right away.

1. In Zabbix, open Users → API tokens and click Create API token. Pick a user who can acknowledge and close problems on the hosts you want (they need read-write access to them). Zabbix shows the token once.
2. In Freesbe, open the connection’s ⋯ menu, click Edit, and fill in Zabbix address (where you open the Zabbix frontend, like https://zabbix.example.com) and API token. Freesbe checks the token with Zabbix before saving it, and keeps it encrypted.

Freesbe calls Zabbix’s API from the internet, so the frontend must be reachable over HTTPS from outside your network. If it isn’t, you still get every card; the buttons just aren’t shown. Close problem only works on triggers where Allow manual close is on in Zabbix; otherwise Freesbe says so, and the problem closes when Zabbix sees it’s fixed.

The live problems board

The board is one card, pinned at the top of the alert channel, that lists every problem open right now, worst first: its severity, host, how long it’s been open, and who acknowledged it. Its top line counts problems by severity and how many hosts they affect, and it says All clear when nothing is open.

The board changes in place with every problem, update and recovery Zabbix sends, and every button pressed on a card, so it never adds to the channel’s messages. It works from what Zabbix sends, so it needs no API token. Open the channel’s pins to get back to it.

It’s on for every connection. To turn it off, open the connection’s ⋯ menu, click Edit, and untick Pin a live problems board: the board comes off the pins and stays as it last was. If someone deletes it, Freesbe posts a new one with the next problem.

Ask with /zabbix

Anyone in a channel can type /zabbix to see what Zabbix sees. Only they see the answer, except for reports.

Type	To get
/zabbix	The problems open in Zabbix right now, worst first
/zabbix host web-02	A host’s open problems and key values: CPU, memory, disks, uptime and ping
/zabbix report	A report on the last 7 days, posted for everyone in the channel
/zabbix report day	The same for the last 24 hours
/zabbix ask and a question	An answer written from Zabbix’s data with AI

/zabbix host and the full history behind reports and questions need the connection’s Zabbix address and API token (see Acknowledge and close from the card). Without them, /zabbix lists the problems Zabbix sent to Freesbe, and reports and questions use those. When the workspace has more than one Zabbix connection, /zabbix uses the one posting to the channel you’re in.

Questions

Ask about your servers in your own words, in any language:

• /zabbix ask which hosts had the most problems this week?
• /zabbix ask how was CPU on db-01 today?
• /zabbix ask is anything still open from last night?

Freesbe reads the problems open now and those from the period you ask about (the last day, week or month), and for each host named in the question, its key values hour by hour. The AI answers only from that data, and says so when it doesn’t hold the answer. Each question counts as one AI request toward your workspace’s monthly allowance.

Reports

A report covers the last day or week: how many problems by severity, how many are still open, total problem time, the typical time to resolve, the noisiest problems and the busiest hosts.

Post one any time with /zabbix report, or have it post on its own: open the connection’s ⋯ menu, click Edit, and pick Every morning at 9:00 or Monday mornings at 9:00 under Reports. The time is in the time zone of the admin who saved it. Reports post to the connection’s channel.

Change or remove a connection

From a connection’s ⋯ menu:

• Send a test alert posts a sample card.
• Edit changes the name, channel, severity filter, reply setting, board, reports, address and token. Tick Remove the saved token to take the buttons (and /zabbix host) away.
• Turn off stops posting until you turn it back on. Zabbix’s messages fail while it’s off, so you’ll see them in Zabbix’s Reports → Action log.
• Delete disconnects it. Cards already posted stay. Also remove the Freesbe media from the user in Zabbix.

The list shows how many problems are open for each connection and when Zabbix last sent something.

Questions

Does Freesbe need to reach my Zabbix server? Only for the buttons, /zabbix host, and the full history in reports and questions. Zabbix sends the problems to Freesbe, so cards work with a Zabbix server that can reach the internet but isn’t reachable from it. Use the media type’s http_proxy parameter if Zabbix goes out through a proxy.

Who can see the cards? Everyone in the channel. Use a private channel for problems only some people should see.

Is the URL a secret? Yes: anyone with it can post problems into the channel. Keep it in Zabbix only. If it leaks, delete the connection and connect again for a new URL.

What about other tools? Grafana and Prometheus Alertmanager, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, Datadog, Sentry, Better Stack, New Relic, Uptime Kuma and UptimeRobot are in the same Monitoring category. Any other tool can post to an incoming webhook.