Zapier, Make and n8n: Automating SCREENish Without Code

Zapier, Make and n8n can all react to what happens in SCREENish today, without waiting for a published app. They listen on a webhook URL, and SCREENish sends events to any address you give it. From there the automation does whatever those platforms do — write a row, open a ticket, send a message, start an approval.

The shape of it

The trigger is a webhook. In Zapier it is Webhooks by Zapier > Catch Hook; in Make, a Custom webhook; in n8n, the Webhook node. Each of them gives you a URL.
The action side, when your automation needs to look something up or write manual time back, is an API key used as a bearer token in an HTTP request step.

Connecting

Create the webhook in your automation platform and copy its URL.
In SCREENish open API & Integrations. If it is your first connection, accept the API access terms shown at the top.
In Connections: webhooks and chat choose Custom webhook (signed JSON to your own system, Zapier, Make, n8n), label it, paste the URL, tick the events you want, and press Add connection.
Copy the signing secret from the yellow box — it is shown once.
Press Test. The platform should show one caught request; use it to build the rest of the scenario.

What arrives

A JSON object with an id, the event name, when it happened, the account and the event's own fields — a member id, a project id, minutes, a severity, a time window. Member and project ids match what the API returns, so a lookup step can turn them into names. The events available are the same ones listed in Slack: Getting SCREENish Alerts in a Channel; the exact field-by-field description is on the developers page.

Watch the volume

Automation platforms charge by the task or the operation. Every 10-minute entry fires six times an hour per tracking member — on a team of ten that is several hundred runs a day, and it will show up on your bill. The daily summary, activity reviews and approval changes are the events that usually earn their keep.

Two things worth doing properly

Keep the URL secret. A catch hook URL is unguessable but not authenticated: anyone who has it can feed your scenario invented events. Do not paste it into a ticket or a shared document.
Verify the signature where you can. Every delivery carries a timestamp and a signature computed with the signing secret. n8n and Make can check it in a code or function step, which is the difference between "an event arrived" and "an event arrived from SCREENish". Zapier's Catch Hook cannot check it before the Zap runs; there, treat the URL itself as the secret.

Answering, retries and pausing

Answer with any success status within 10 seconds. A failed delivery is retried after 1, 5 and 30 minutes, then 2 and 6 hours, and abandoned after five attempts; a destination that keeps failing is paused automatically and the row says why. Deliveries shows each attempt and the answer received, which is the first place to look when a scenario stops firing.

Letting the automation register itself

With a read + write key, a platform can create and delete its own webhook subscriptions over the API instead of your adding them by hand — the pattern Zapier and Make expect from a published app. See the developers page and API Keys: Creating, Limiting and Revoking Them.