Webhooks

Award Force has a number of webhooks which can be used to trigger actions between Award Force and third-party applications. Webhooks extend the functionality of your program so that you can create automations with other software tools.

For example, if you want to create an invoice in your billing system when an entrant makes a payment, then you can use the Order payment success webhook. You can also add users to an external CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool the moment new users register with Award Force by using the User created webhook.

Create a webhook

1. Open the Manage workspace in Award Force and navigate to Settings > Developers > Webhooks

2. Click New webhook

3. Type in a Name
   

4. Paste in the Webhook URL

5. Enter a new or use the auto-generated Signing key (see below for more information about signing keys)

6. Select one of more of the Event subscriptions

7. Specify a notification email address--this is the email address you want error messages to be sent to

8. Click Save

Testing the webhook

We're going to demonstrate how to test webhooks using webhook.site but you can also test with an automation tool like Zapier or Make, previously called Integromat.

1. Go to webhook.site and copy Your unique URL and paste it into the Webhook URL field in Award Force 

2. Give the webhook a name and select an event subscription. For the purposes of this test we're using Entry submitted.

3. Submit an entry in Award Force. You should see the request appear immediately on webhook.site.

You can then programmatically do whatever you want with this information such as add it to a spreadsheet or send an email or add it to your CRM.

What is the signing key?

The signing key is a security feature which you can use to verify the information is coming from Award Force. You don't have to verify the key but it's an added security measure which will prevent your integration from accepting information from potentially malicious third parties.

It uses a hash-based message authentication (HMAC) system with an sha256 algorithm. This means the information coming from Award Force will be encrypted using your signing key. You can test it using this free online HMAC generator/testing tool. 

Verify the signing key

1. Copy the content you received at webhook.site being sure to select only the raw content by deselecting the checkboxes next to Format JSON and Word-Wrap. 

2. Paste the content into string field on the HMCA generator site. 

3. Paste in your secret key from the webhooks page in Award Force. 

4. Select SHA256 from the message digest algorithm. 

5. Then click Compute HMAC. The value you see should match exactly the value for the signature on the webhook.site.

Please refer to our API documentation for more information about our current webhooks and API. We also have a Zapier app.