Tag: lametric

Fun with Business Central & Webhook triggers

Let’s say you want to display a message on your LaMetric clock, every time a sales invoice with an amount over 10.000 is posted in Business Central. Or you want to put on a red light at your desk, when some critical BC job task failed.

That’s where webhook triggers come into play.

Using IFTTT

  1. Create a new applet in https://ifttt.com/create

2. In the “If This” part, add the service Webhooks:

3. Select “Receive a web request” as trigger:

4. Give your webhook a name:

5. In the “Then That” part, you have to select the service that has to execute your task. In this case, I chose the LaMetric integration. You can pick the Philips Hue integration if you want to switch on a light, use Spotify or Sonos to play a song , … .

6. Now you need to find out the complete URL to access this webhook trigger. Using IFTTT, it’s always in this format: 

https://maker.ifttt.com/trigger/{event}/json/with/key/{webhooks_key}

with {event} being the name you used in step 4.
The {webhooks_key} can be found on the Webhooks service page by clicking on Documentation.

7. Time to write some AL code to call this URL after a sales invoice is posted in Business Central:

8. Now, every time a sales invoice is posted with an amount over 10.000, the notification is displayed.

Using Home Assistant

When you have HA running, you don’t need the IFTTT service as you can easily create an automation with his own webhook. You need to be able to connect remotely to your Home Assistant instance as this will be probably on a different network than the Business Central server. I have a subscription with Nabu Casa to access my HA installation from remote, but other options (some free) are available (for example the add-on DuckDNS).

The process to create an HA automation with a webhook trigger is clearly described here. It’s important you de-select the option “Only accessible from the local network” when creating the trigger, otherwise the URL is not accessible from outside your network:

The full automation, with the same behaviour as the IFTTT applet:

The code in Business Central is exactly the same, only the URL now points to your HA instance and webhook:

Maybe this post can inspire you to connect Business Central with the outside world.

Light up ON AIR when in Teams call

Lot’s of us are still doing most of their work from home. Especially in the IT business, this practice is commonplace. When you have a computer and a internet connection available, you can basically do everything as when you are present in the office.

When having meetings or calls with Microsoft teams, it would be nice to let your housemates know that you are busy, to avoid uncomfortable situations … for both parties.

The setup

When Microsoft teams on my laptop is in meeting/call mode, then …

1. The ON AIR light at the door of my home office switches on:

2. A notification is displayed on LaMetric TIME:

3. The background led lights are switched on:

How does this work

It all starts with this little program, written by Stephan van Rooij: Teams monitor. This is a command line application that connects to the local Teams API and forwards the meeting status to any endpoint (you manage).

I put this program in the Windows startup folder, so it runs every time my laptop is switched on. His documentation includes detailed instructions how to integrate this with Home Assistant, using a toggle helper and a webhook trigger. This explains how the ON AIR light and led lights are switched on and off.

To send the notification to LaMetric TIME, the LaMetric integration of HA was used:

The ON AIR light box can be bought on Amazon. I bought the cheapest, and replaced the build-in light with a Zigbee led strip that I still had lying around.

Note: The LaMetric TIME is quite expensive. A cheaper solution is this Ulanzi smart pixel clock. How to flash it with new firmware and send notifications via HA is explained in this video.