Webex bot connection with websocket

[shrwnaik]

Hi,

I have been connecting with webex bot using webhook and ngrok,but I got a mail stating that you cannot use ngrok since it is a matter of security threat.Is there any alternative for this?

Also I tried with websocket as well but I was getting connection timeout error after inactivity.

[Raffaele Lagana]

ngrok is blocked by Cisco Security, so any employees within Cisco aren't usually able to use that. It's blocked throughout the Cisco Network.

If you use your personal PC or a machine outside the Cisco Network, it should still work.

[shrwnaik]

Is there any alternative for ngrok which is approved by cisco security for webhooks.This is a blocker for me.

[Raffaele Lagana]

Not aware of one, other than setting up your own server.

We used to use ngrok in Dev Support to test stuff too, but had to move away from that due to the same security complaints. It's blocked throughout Cisco, nothing we can do about it.

You probably will need to look into creating your own server unfortunately, or use an external machine if that's an option (so that you can continue using ngrok).

[dstaudt]

Security restrictions around reverse-proxy/tunnel apps like NGrok/Localtunnel make some sense, as they essentially poke a hole in the enterprise's firewall that isn't monitored/controlled by the IT team.
Some alternatives:
* Use the Webex SDK and websocket - this is probably the primary go-to advice...if it's not working for you, I would recommend pushing for solutions to those problems.
* Temporarily use a mobile phone wifi hotspot from your PC when doing webhook R&D
* Use a third party external VPN (e.g. NordVPN) - this also is probably frowned upon by enterprise IT folks
* Use a cloud-based VM/container, e.g. in AWS/GCP

[shrwnaik]

I am building a solution which checks if the bot is been added to group space. Webex Teams uses webhooks to notify your application of events like a bot being added to a space. Is there any way it can be achieved using websocket?

[Raffaele Lagana]

Yes, you can use the JS SDK to do this. We have a blog about it, see Using Websockets with the Webex JavaScript SDK. And we also have a code sample, see the Hookbuster sample.