Skip to main content

How to create integrations for emergency alerts?

  • Updated

General solution overview

Airtame's Emergency Alerts API provides a seamless solution for organizations to broadcast critical notifications instantly across Airtame-enabled screens. By supporting both native alerts within Airtame Cloud and third-party integrations via the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) or a JSON payload, the system ensures fast, reliable, and automated emergency communication. With real-time display capabilities, webhook confirmations, and easy integration, this API helps organizations enhance safety and responsiveness during emergencies.

Features

  • Native Emergency Alerts: Manage and trigger emergency notifications directly from Airtame Cloud.
  • Third-Party Integration: Receive and display alerts from external notification systems using the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) or Airtame's JSON format.
  • Real-Time Display: Alerts appear instantly on screens, ensuring timely information dissemination.
  • Customizable Alerts: Supports different alert types, priority levels, and duration settings.
  • Webhooks for Alert Confirmation: Receive automatic notifications when an alert is successfully processed and displayed.

Workflow for integrating external alerting systems

External alerting systems are not aware of device groupings in Airtame Cloud, so the target groups for an alert are defined as part of the webhook configuration — not the incoming alert payload. This design also allows customers to update the target groups at any time without needing to modify or reconfigure their external systems.

  1. Create a Webhook in Airtame Cloud

     The customer creates a new emergency alert webhook via Airtame Cloud. During setup, they select the target device groups (or the entire organization) that should be alerted when this webhook is triggered. Once created, Airtame Cloud generates:

    • A unique webhook URL
    • An auto-generated API Key for authentication.
  2. Configure the External Alerting System

     The customer configures their external alerting system to send emergency alerts to the webhook URL provided in step 1.

    Airtame supports the following payload formats:

    • CAP (Common Alerting Protocol) messages
    • Airtame JSON payloads

Once an alert is received via the webhook, Airtame Cloud will validate the message and convert it into an emergency alert for the defined target groups.

Airtame Cloud configuration

Before You Start

Make sure you have the following:

  • An Admin or Owner role in Airtame Cloud.
  • Online and licensed Airtame devices. Only these devices will display alerts when triggered.

Step-by-Step: Create a Connection

  1. Log in to Airtame Cloud.
  2. Go to the Emergency alerts section.
  3. Click on Settings.

  1. Click New connection.
  2. Give the connection a clear Name—this helps with future troubleshooting.
  3. Under Screens to alert, choose whether to apply alerts to:
    • All screen groups, or
    • Specific groups (e.g. only “Classrooms”).
  4. Click Create.

Once the connection is created, you’ll see a unique URL and an API Key.

  • Click Copy API Key and store it securely. For security reasons, Airtame won’t show it again.
  • Click Close when you’re done.
  • Back on the connection list, click Copy URL to get the endpoint your system will call.

Edit a Connection

You can update the connection’s name or targeted screen groups at any time:

  1. From the connections list, click Edit on the connection you want to change.
  2. Make your updates and save.

🔒 Note: You can’t edit a connection while it’s actively being used to send an emergency alert.

Delete a Connection

To remove a connection:

  1. From the connections list, click Delete.
  2. Confirm deletion.

⚠️ Warning: Deleting a connection is permanent and cannot be undone.

🔒 Note: You can’t delete a connection if an alert from it is currently active.

Related articles