Even more reload alerting - Extra mega super deluxe!

Alerting

Right - it was just a couple of releases ago that Butler focused on reload alerts.

But we're at it again - this time bringing the now battle-tested concepts around email alerts for failed reloads to more channels:

• Slack
• MS Teams
• Outgoing webhooks
• MQTT messages

With Slack, Teams and Email alerts you get access to all the layout and formatting options supported by those platforms.
Messages can look like this.
The idea is that whoever gets those alerts should be able to determine what went wrong, without having to dive into the logs in the QMC.
The full list of 40+ template fields are available for Slack, Teams and email.

Alerts can optionally also be sent to the app owner of the app that failed reloading.

Partial reloads

Unrelated to alerting, this new feature tries to solve a long standing issue with Qlik Sense: partial reloads.

Butler now exposes a REST API that makes it easy to do full or partial app reloads without having to go via a reload task.
The reload can be started via Butler's API or from a Sense load script (a single line is all that's needed!).
When the reload is done zero or more reload tasks can be started, with different tasks being used depending on whether the reload completed successfully or failed.

Full list of changes available in the changelog.

Documentation available at [butler.ptarmiganlabs.com≈(https://butler.ptarmiganlabs.com), as always.

Better config instructions & examples

Not the biggest of releases but it should make it a bit easier to get started using Butler.

• Fixed a bug that in some cases prevented reload tasks from being started using Butler's API to fail.
• More/better/improved documentation: Concepts and examples have both been extended with both new and updated pages.
  • Instructions for setting up the data connections needed to use Butler APIs from load scripts.
  • Examples on how to move/copy/delete files from Sense load scripts using Butler.
• Updated dependencies to stay sharp and secure.

The documentation site is available at butler.ptarmiganlabs.com.

Maintenance release

Updated dependencies to stay sharp and secure.

Alert emails deluxe

This release brings some of the best looking reload-failed alert emails the Qlikosphere has ever seen.
Or at least the best ones we've ever seen here at Ptarmigan Labs...

Alert emails can be sent when reload tasks fail or when they are aborted.
The emails are created from templates, which gives full freedom to include the data that is relevant for you.

The best feature of those emails?
That they can include the script log. You want the last 15 lines from the log included in the email? No problem.
You'd rather fancy the first 20 and last 30 lines from the log in the email? You got it. It's all configurable.

More than 40 template fields are available, resulting in emails like this one.

Documentation available at [butler.ptarmiganlabs.com≈(https://butler.ptarmiganlabs.com), as always.

Sense demo app can now start reloads

The included Sense demo app now correctly uses the Butler API endpoint used to start reload tasks.

Fixing broken start Sense task API endpoint

Oops. The API endpoint for starting Sense tasks was incorrectly documented, as noted in #89.
Fixed in this version 4.1.1.

File copying + Qlik Sense = Useful

This is a small release that just adds a single endpoint to Butler's REST API: Copying files.

This is done in the same way as the moving files feature that was added in v4.0:

In the config file you define pairs of approved source/destination directories, between which file copying is allowed.
This way the security risk is greatly reduced, and file copying can become an integral part of Qlik Sense load scripts' logic.

Rebooting Butler

This release turned out to be larger than first anticipated, but that's ok. Lot's of good changes made it into version 4.0!
Some of them are:

• Task scheduler (#80)
• Key-value store (#65)
• Swagger API docs (#76)
• Move and delete files in the file system (#84)
• Uptime logging, incl memory usage stored in Influx db for charting/monitoring in Grafana (#82)
• Configurable Docker healthcheck (#73)
• Added option to send task failure notifications to MS Teams (#83)

Please see butler.ptarmiganlabs.com and the changelog for details.

An armful of heart beats

Our trusted Butler has turned four - quite an age in the world of fast-moving DevOps tools!

Over time it's become clear that some features are more useful than others, which is not really surprising of course.
Some of Butler's features are on the other hand very useful - for example starting reloads or dumping app metadata to JSON via REST calls.

The trusted old Butler is thus very much alive and as of version 3.1.0 it's available as Arm and Arm64 Docker images, in addition to the already supported amd64 (equals regular x86 computers, more or less) architecture.

And - the Butler can now be configured to send heart beats to a monitoring tool, to monitor and make sure that Butler itself is alive and well.

What does that means in regular English?
You can now run Butler on more cost effective AWS EC2 Arm instances, or even a Raspberry Pi - just because it's possible and gives you some tech street cred.
And that you can monitor the Butler itself.

Respect.

Updated dependencies to latest versions, bringing in bug and security fixes.

Merge pull request #66 from mountaindude/master

3.0.4 RC2