kibana/x-pack/plugins/actions

Kibana Actions

The Kibana actions plugin provides a framework to create executable actions. You can:

• Register an action type and associate a JavaScript function to run when actions are executed.
• Get a list of registered action types
• Create an action from an action type and encrypted configuration object.
• Get a list of actions that have been created.
• Execute an action, passing it a parameter object.
• Perform CRUD operations on actions.

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Table of Contents

• Kibana Actions
  • Terminology
  • Usage
  • Kibana Actions Configuration
    • Configuration Options
      • allowedHosts configuration
    • Configuration Utilities
  • Action types
    • Methods
    • Executor
    • Example
  • RESTful API
  • Firing actions
    • Accessing a scoped ActionsClient
    • actionsClient.enqueueExecution(options)
      • Example
    • actionsClient.execute(options)
      • Example
• Built-in Action Types
  • ServiceNow ITSM
    • params
      • subActionParams (pushToService)
      • subActionParams (getFields)
      • subActionParams (getIncident)
      • subActionParams (getChoices)
  • ServiceNow Sec Ops
    • params
      • subActionParams (pushToService)
      • subActionParams (getFields)
      • subActionParams (getIncident)
      • subActionParams (getChoices)
  • ServiceNow ITOM
    • params
      • subActionParams (addEvent)
      • subActionParams (getChoices)
  • Jira
    • params
      • subActionParams (pushToService)
      • subActionParams (getIncident)
      • subActionParams (issueTypes)
      • subActionParams (fieldsByIssueType)
      • subActionParams (issues)
      • subActionParams (issue)
      • subActionParams (getFields)
  • IBM Resilient
    • params
      • subActionParams (pushToService)
      • subActionParams (getFields)
      • subActionParams (incidentTypes)
      • subActionParams (severity)
  • Swimlane
    • params
  • | severity | The severity of the incident. | string (optional) |
• Command Line Utility
• Developing New Action Types
  • licensing
  • plugin location
  • documentation
  • tests
  • action type config and secrets
  • user interface

Terminology

Action Type: A programatically defined integration with another service, with an expected set of configuration and parameters properties, typically defined with a schema. Plugins can add new action types.

Action: A configuration object associated with an action type, that is ready to be executed. The configuration is persisted via Saved Objects, and some/none/all of the configuration properties can be stored encrypted.

Usage

1. Develop and register an action type (see Action types -> Example).
2. Create an action by using the RESTful API.
3. Use alerts to execute actions or execute manually (see Firing actions).

Kibana Actions Configuration

Implemented under the Actions Config.

Configuration Options

Built-In-Actions are configured using the xpack.actions namespace under kibana.yml. See the Actions configuration Documentation for all configuration options.

allowedHosts configuration

• You can use the string "*" in the allowedHosts configuration in place of a specific hostname to enable Kibana to target any URL, but keep in mind the potential to use such a feature to execute SSRF attacks from your server.

• The allowedHosts configuration applies to built-in action types (such as Slack and PagerDuty). While the PagerDuty Action Type has been configured to support the service's Events API (at https://events.pagerduty.com/v2/enqueue, which you can read about in Pagerduty's documentation), the PagerDuty domain must still be included in the allowedHosts configuration before the action can be used.

Configuration Utilities

This module provides utilities for interacting with the configuration.

Method	Arguments	Description	Return Type
isUriAllowed	uri: The URI you wish to validate is allowed	Validates whether the URI is allowed. This checks the configuration and validates that the hostname of the URI is in the list of allowed Hosts and returns true if it is allowed. If the configuration says that all URI's are allowed (using an "*") then it will always return true.	Boolean
isHostnameAllowed	hostname: The Hostname you wish to validate is allowed	Validates whether the Hostname is allowed. This checks the configuration and validates that the hostname is in the list of allowed Hosts and returns true if it is allowed. If the configuration says that all Hostnames are allowed (using an "*") then it will always return true.	Boolean
isActionTypeEnabled	actionType: The actionType to check to see if it's enabled	Returns true if the actionType is enabled, otherwise false.	Boolean
ensureUriAllowed	uri: The URI you wish to validate is allowed	Validates whether the URI is allowed. This checks the configuration and validates that the hostname of the URI is in the list of allowed Hosts and throws an error if it is not allowed. If the configuration says that all URI's are allowed (using an "*") then it will never throw.	No return value, throws if URI isn't allowed
ensureHostnameAllowed	hostname: The Hostname you wish to validate is allowed	Validates whether the Hostname is allowed. This checks the configuration and validates that the hostname is in the list of allowed Hosts and throws an error if it is not allowed. If the configuration says that all Hostnames are allowed (using an "*") then it will never throw	No return value, throws if Hostname isn't allowed .
ensureActionTypeEnabled	actionType: The actionType to check to see if it's enabled	Throws an error if the actionType is not enabled	No return value, throws if actionType isn't enabled
isRejectUnauthorizedCertificatesEnabled	none	Returns value of rejectUnauthorized from configuration.	Boolean
getProxySettings	none	If proxyUrl is set in the configuration, returns the proxy settings proxyUrl, proxyHeaders and proxyRejectUnauthorizedCertificates. Otherwise returns undefined.	Undefined or ProxySettings

Action types

Methods

server.plugins.actions.setup.registerType (options)

The following table describes the properties of the options object.

Property	Description	Type
id	Unique identifier for the action type. For convention, ids starting with . are reserved for built in action types. We recommend using a convention like <plugin_id>.mySpecialAction for your action types.	string
name	A user-friendly name for the action type. These will be displayed in dropdowns when chosing action types.	string
maxAttempts	The maximum number of times this action will attempt to execute when scheduled.	number
minimumLicenseRequired	The license required to use the action type.	string
validate.params	When developing an action type, it needs to accept parameters to know what to do with the action. (Example to, from, subject, body of an email). See the current built-in email action type for an example of the state-of-the-art validation. Technically, the value of this property should have a property named validate() which is a function that takes a params object to validate and returns a sanitized version of that object to pass to the execution function. Validation errors should be thrown from the validate() function and will be available as an error message	schema / validation function
validate.config	Similar to params, a config may be required when creating an action (for example host and port for an email server).	schema / validation function
validate.secrets	Similar to params, a secrets object may be required when creating an action (for example user and password for an email server).	schema / validation function
executor	This is where the code of an action type lives. This is a function gets called for executing an action from either alerting or manually by using the exposed function (see firing actions). For full details, see executor section below.	Function
renderParameterTemplates	Optionally define a function to provide custom rendering for this action type.	Function

Important - The config object is persisted in ElasticSearch and updated via the ElasticSearch update document API. This API allows "partial updates" - and this can cause issues with the encryption used on specified properties. So, a validate() function should return values for all configuration properties, so that partial updates do not occur. Setting property values to null rather than undefined, or not including a property in the config object, is all you need to do to ensure partial updates won't occur.

Executor

This is the primary function for an action type. Whenever the action needs to execute, this function will perform the action. It receives a variety of parameters. The following table describes the properties that the executor receives.

executor(options)

Property	Description
actionId	The action saved object id that the action type is executing for.
config	The action configuration. If you would like to validate the config before being passed to the executor, define validate.config within the action type.
secrets	The decrypted secrets object given to an action. This comes from the action saved object that is partially or fully encrypted within the data store. If you would like to validate the secrets object before being passed to the executor, define validate.secrets within the action type.
params	Parameters for the execution. These will be given at execution time by either an alert or manually provided when calling the plugin provided execute function.
services.scopedClusterClient	Use this to do Elasticsearch queries on the cluster Kibana connects to. Serves the same purpose as the normal IClusterClient, but exposes an additional asCurrentUser method that doesn't use credentials of the Kibana internal user (as asInternalUser does) to request Elasticsearch API, but rather passes HTTP headers extracted from the current user request to the API instead.
services.savedObjectsClient	This is an instance of the saved objects client. This provides the ability to do CRUD on any saved objects within the same space the alert lives in. The scope of the saved objects client is tied to the user in context calling the execute API or the API key provided to the execute plugin function (only when security isenabled).
services.log(tags, [data], [timestamp])	Use this to create server logs. (This is the same function as server.log)

Example

The built-in email action type provides a good example of creating an action type with non-trivial configuration and params: x-pack/plugins/actions/server/builtin_action_types/email.ts

RESTful API

Using an action type requires an action to be created that will contain and encrypt configuration for a given action type. See the REST API Documentation API for CRUD operations for Actions.

Firing actions

Running actions is possible by using the ActionsClient which is provided by the getActionsClientWithRequest function part of the plugin's Start Contract. By providing the user's Request you'll receive an instance of the ActionsClient which is tailered to the current user and is scoped to the resources the user is authorized to access.

Accessing a scoped ActionsClient

const actionsClient = server.plugins.actions.getActionsClientWithRequest(request);

Once you have a scoped ActionsClient you can execute an action by caling either the enqueueExecution which will schedule the action to run later or the execute apis which will run it immediately and return the result respectively.

actionsClient.enqueueExecution(options)

This api schedules a task which will run the action using the current user scope at the soonest opportunity.

Running the action by scheduling a task means that we will no longer have a user request by which to ascertain the action's privileges and so you might need to provide these yourself:

• The spaceId in which the user's action is expected to run
• When security is enabled you'll also need to provide an apiKey which allows us to mimic the user and their privileges.

The following table describes the properties of the options object.

Property	Description	Type
id	The id of the action you want to execute.	string
params	The params value to give the action type executor.	object
spaceId	The space id the action is within.	string
apiKey	The Elasticsearch API key to use for context. (Note: only required and used when security is enabled).	string
source	The source of the execution, either an HTTP request or a reference to a Saved Object.	object, optional

Example

This example makes action 3c5b2bd4-5424-4e4b-8cf5-c0a58c762cc5 send an email. The action plugin will load the saved object and find what action type to call with params.

const request: KibanaRequest = { ... };
const actionsClient = await server.plugins.actions.getActionsClientWithRequest(request);
await actionsClient.enqueueExecution({
  id: '3c5b2bd4-5424-4e4b-8cf5-c0a58c762cc5',
  spaceId: 'default', // The spaceId of the action
  params: {
    from: 'example@elastic.co',
    to: ['destination@elastic.co'],
    subject: 'My email subject',
    body: 'My email body',
  },
  source: asHttpRequestExecutionSource(request),
});

actionsClient.execute(options)

This api runs the action and asynchronously returns the result of running the action.

The following table describes the properties of the options object.

Property	Description	Type
id	The id of the action you want to execute.	string
params	The params value to give the action type executor.	object
source	The source of the execution, either an HTTP request or a reference to a Saved Object.	object, optional

Example

As with the previous example, we'll use the action 3c5b2bd4-5424-4e4b-8cf5-c0a58c762cc5 to send an email.

const actionsClient = await server.plugins.actions.getActionsClientWithRequest(request);
const result = await actionsClient.execute({
  id: '3c5b2bd4-5424-4e4b-8cf5-c0a58c762cc5',
  params: {
    from: 'example@elastic.co',
    to: ['destination@elastic.co'],
    subject: 'My email subject',
    body: 'My email body',
  },
  source: asSavedObjectExecutionSource({
    id: '573891ae-8c48-49cb-a197-0cd5ec34a88b',
    type: 'alert',
  }),
});

Built-in Action Types

Kibana ships with a set of built-in action types. See Actions and connector types Documentation.

In addition to the documented configurations, several built in action type offer additional params configurations.

ServiceNow ITSM

The ServiceNow ITSM user documentation params lists configuration properties for the pushToService subaction. In addition, several other subaction types are available.

params

Property	Description	Type
subAction	The subaction to perform. It can be pushToService, getFields, getIncident, and getChoices.	string
subActionParams	The parameters of the subaction.	object

subActionParams (pushToService)

Property	Description	Type
incident	The ServiceNow incident.	object
comments	The comments of the case. A comment is of the form { commentId: string, version: string, comment: string }.	object[] (optional)

The following table describes the properties of the incident object.

Property	Description	Type
short_description	The title of the incident.	string
description	The description of the incident.	string (optional)
externalId	The ID of the incident in ServiceNow. If present, the incident is updated. Otherwise, a new incident is created.	string (optional)
severity	The severity in ServiceNow.	string (optional)
urgency	The urgency in ServiceNow.	string (optional)
impact	The impact in ServiceNow.	string (optional)
category	The category in ServiceNow.	string (optional)
subcategory	The subcategory in ServiceNow.	string (optional)
correlation_id	The correlation id of the incident.	string (optional)
correlation_display	The correlation display of the ServiceNow.	string (optional)

subActionParams (getFields)

No parameters for the getFields subaction. Provide an empty object {}.

subActionParams (getIncident)

Property	Description	Type
externalId	The ID of the incident in ServiceNow.	string

subActionParams (getChoices)

Property	Description	Type
fields	An array of fields. Example: [category, impact].	string[]

---

ServiceNow Sec Ops

The ServiceNow SecOps user documentation params lists configuration properties for the pushToService subaction. In addition, several other subaction types are available.

params

Property	Description	Type
subAction	The subaction to perform. It can be pushToService, getFields, getIncident, and getChoices.	string
subActionParams	The parameters of the subaction.	object

subActionParams (pushToService)

Property	Description	Type
incident	The ServiceNow security incident.	object
comments	The comments of the case. A comment is of the form { commentId: string, version: string, comment: string }.	object[] (optional)

The following table describes the properties of the incident object.

Property	Description	Type
short_description	The title of the security incident.	string
description	The description of the security incident.	string (optional)
externalId	The ID of the security incident in ServiceNow. If present, the security incident is updated. Otherwise, a new security incident is created.	string (optional)
priority	The priority in ServiceNow.	string (optional)
dest_ip	A list of destination IPs related to the security incident. The IPs will be added as observables to the security incident.	(string | string[]) (optional)
source_ip	A list of source IPs related to the security incident. The IPs will be added as observables to the security incident.	(string | string[]) (optional)
malware_hash	A list of malware hashes related to the security incident. The hashes will be added as observables to the security incident.	(string | string[]) (optional)
malware_url	A list of malware URLs related to the security incident. The URLs will be added as observables to the security incident.	(string | string[]) (optional)
category	The category in ServiceNow.	string (optional)
subcategory	The subcategory in ServiceNow.	string (optional)
correlation_id	The correlation id of the security incident.	string (optional)
correlation_display	The correlation display of the security incident.	string (optional)

subActionParams (getFields)

No parameters for the getFields subaction. Provide an empty object {}.

subActionParams (getIncident)

Property	Description	Type
externalId	The ID of the security incident in ServiceNow.	string

subActionParams (getChoices)

Property	Description	Type
fields	An array of fields. Example: [priority, category].	string[]

---

ServiceNow ITOM

The ServiceNow ITOM user documentation params lists configuration properties for the addEvent subaction. In addition, several other subaction types are available.

params

Property	Description	Type
subAction	The subaction to perform. It can be addEvent, and getChoices.	string
subActionParams	The parameters of the subaction.	object

subActionParams (addEvent)

Property	Description	Type
source	The name of the event source type.	string (optional)
event_class	Specific instance of the source.	string (optional)
resource	The name of the resource.	string (optional)
node	The Host that the event was triggered for.	string (optional)
metric_name	Name of the metric.	string (optional)
type	The type of event.	string (optional)
severity	The category in ServiceNow.	string (optional)
description	The subcategory in ServiceNow.	string (optional)
additional_info	Any additional information about the event.	string (optional)
message_key	This value is used for de-duplication of events. All actions sharing this key will be associated with the same ServiceNow alert.	string (optional)
time_of_event	The time of the event.	string (optional)

Refer to ServiceNow documentation for more information about the properties.

subActionParams (getChoices)

Property	Description	Type
fields	An array of fields. Example: [severity].	string[]

---

Jira

The Jira user documentation params lists configuration properties for the pushToService subaction. In addition, several other subaction types are available.

params

Property	Description	Type
subAction	The subaction to perform. It can be pushToService, getIncident, issueTypes, fieldsByIssueType, issues, issue, and getFields.	string
subActionParams	The parameters of the subaction.	object

subActionParams (pushToService)

Property	Description	Type
incident	The Jira incident.	object
comments	The comments of the case. A comment is of the form { commentId: string, version: string, comment: string }.	object[] (optional)

The following table describes the properties of the incident object.

Property	Description	Type
summary	The title of the issue.	string
description	The description of the issue.	string (optional)
externalId	The ID of the issue in Jira. If present, the incident is updated. Otherwise, a new incident is created.	string (optional)
issueType	The ID of the issue type in Jira.	string (optional)
priority	The name of the priority in Jira. Example: Medium.	string (optional)
labels	An array of labels. Labels cannot contain spaces.	string[] (optional)
parent	The ID or key of the parent issue. Only for Sub-task issue types.	string (optional)

subActionParams (getIncident)

Property	Description	Type
externalId	The ID of the issue in Jira.	string

subActionParams (issueTypes)

No parameters for the issueTypes subaction. Provide an empty object {}.

subActionParams (fieldsByIssueType)

Property	Description	Type
id	The ID of the issue type in Jira.	string

subActionParams (issues)

Property	Description	Type
title	The title to search for.	string

subActionParams (issue)

Property	Description	Type
id	The ID of the issue in Jira.	string

subActionParams (getFields)

No parameters for the getFields subaction. Provide an empty object {}.

---

IBM Resilient

The IBM Resilient user documentation params lists configuration properties for the pushToService subaction. In addition, several other subaction types are available.

params

Property	Description	Type
subAction	The subaction to perform. It can be pushToService, getFields, incidentTypes, and `severity.	string
subActionParams	The parameters of the subaction.	object

subActionParams (pushToService)

Property	Description	Type
incident	The IBM Resilient incident.	object
comments	The comments of the case. A comment is of the form { commentId: string, version: string, comment: string }.	object[] (optional)

The following table describes the properties of the incident object.

Property	Description	Type
name	The title of the incident.	string (optional)
description	The description of the incident.	string (optional)
externalId	The ID of the incident in IBM Resilient. If present, the incident is updated. Otherwise, a new incident is created.	string (optional)
incidentTypes	An array with the IDs of IBM Resilient incident types.	number[] (optional)
severityCode	IBM Resilient ID of the severity code.	number (optional)

subActionParams (getFields)

No parameters for the getFields subaction. Provide an empty object {}.

subActionParams (incidentTypes)

No parameters for the incidentTypes subaction. Provide an empty object {}.

subActionParams (severity)

No parameters for the severity subaction. Provide an empty object {}.

---

Swimlane

params

Property	Description	Type
subAction	The subaction to perform. It can be pushToService.	string
subActionParams	The parameters of the subaction.	object

subActionParams (pushToService)

Property	Description	Type
incident	The Swimlane incident.	object
comments	The comments of the case. A comment is of the form { commentId: string, version: string, comment: string }.	object[] (optional)

The following table describes the properties of the incident object.

Property	Description	Type
alertId	The alert id.	string (optional)
caseId	The case id of the incident.	string (optional)
caseName	The case name of the incident.	string (optional)
description	The description of the incident.	string (optional)
ruleName	The rule name.	string (optional)
severity	The severity of the incident.	string (optional)

---

Command Line Utility

The kbn-action tool can be used to send HTTP requests to the Actions plugin. For instance, to create a Slack action from the .slack Action Type, use the following command:

$ kbn-action create .slack "post to slack" '{"webhookUrl": "https://hooks.slack.com/services/T0000/B0000/XXXX"}'
{
    "type": "action",
    "id": "d6f1e228-1806-4a72-83ac-e06f3d5c2fbe",
    "attributes": {
        "actionTypeId": ".slack",
        "name": "post to slack",
        "config": {}
    },
    "references": [],
    "updated_at": "2019-06-26T17:55:42.728Z",
    "version": "WzMsMV0="
}

Developing New Action Types

When creating a new action type, your plugin will eventually call server.plugins.actions.setup.registerType() to register the type with the actions plugin, but there are some additional things to think about about and implement.

Consider working with the alerting team on early structure /design feedback of new actions, especially as the APIs and infrastructure are still under development.

licensing

Currently actions are licensed as "basic" if the action only interacts with the stack, eg the server log and es index actions. Other actions are at least "gold" level.

plugin location

Currently actions that are licensed as "basic" MUST be implemented in the actions plugin, other actions can be implemented in any other plugin that pre-reqs the actions plugin. If the new action is generic across the stack, it probably belongs in the actions plugin, but if your action is very specific to a plugin/solution, it might be easiest to implement it in the plugin/solution. Keep in mind that if Kibana is run without the plugin being enabled, any actions defined in that plugin will not run, nor will those actions be available via APIs or UI.

Actions that take URLs or hostnames should check that those values are allowed. The allowed host list utilities are currently internal to the actions plugin, and so such actions will need to be implemented in the actions plugin. Longer-term, we will expose these utilities so they can be used by alerts implemented in other plugins; see issue #64659.

documentation

You should create asciidoc for the new action type. Add an entry to the action type index - docs/user/alerting/action-types.asciidoc, which points to a new document for the action type that should be in the directory docs/user/alerting/action-types.

We suggest following the template provided in docs/action-type-template.asciidoc. The Email action type is an example of documentation created following the template.

tests

The action type should have both jest tests and functional tests. For functional tests, if your action interacts with a 3rd party service via HTTP, you may be able to create a simulator for your service, to test with. See the existing functional test servers in the directory x-pack/test/alerting_api_integration/common/fixtures/plugins/actions_simulators/server

action type config and secrets

Action types must define config and secrets which are used to create connectors. This data should be described with @kbn/config-schema object schemas, and you MUST NOT use schema.maybe() to define properties.

This is due to the fact that the structures are persisted in saved objects, which performs partial updates on the persisted data. If a property value is already persisted, but an update either doesn't include the property, or sets it to undefined, the persisted value will not be changed. Beyond this being a semantic error in general, it also ends up invalidating the encryption used to save secrets, and will render the secrets will not be able to be unencrypted later.

Instead of schema.maybe(), use schema.nullable(), which is the same as schema.maybe() except that when passed an undefined value, the object returned from the validation will be set to null. The resulting type will be property-type | null, whereas with schema.maybe() it would be property-type | undefined.

user interface

To make this action usable in the Kibana UI, you will need to provide all the UI editing aspects of the action. The existing action type user interfaces are defined in x-pack/plugins/triggers_actions_ui/public/application/components/builtin_action_types. For more information, see the UI documentation.