getting-started.md

copyright	years 2021, 2026
lastupdated	2026-05-11
keywords	event notifications, IBM Cloud
subcollection	event-notifications
content-type	tutorial
account-plan	lite, standard
completion-time	10m

{{site.data.keyword.attribute-definition-list}}

Getting started with {{site.data.keyword.en_short}}

{: #getting-started} {: toc-content-type="tutorial"} {: toc-completion-time="10m"}

This tutorial brings you through the steps that you need to take before you create an {{site.data.keyword.en_full_notm}} service. {: shortdesc}

{{site.data.keyword.en_short}} is a routing service that provides you about critical events that occur in your {{site.data.keyword.cloud}} account. You can filter and route event notifications from {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} services like {{site.data.keyword.monitoringlong_notm}}, {{site.data.keyword.compliance_short}}, {{site.data.keyword.secrets-manager_short}}, {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} Projects, and Toolchain to communication channels like email, SMS, push notifications, Huawei Cloud Push, webhook, slack, Microsoft® Teams, ServiceNow, and {{site.data.keyword.cos_full_notm}}.

Create an {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} account

{: #en-cloud-ac} {: step}

If you don't have an {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} account, create one{: external}.

Decide on a location

{: #en-decide-location} {: step}

Decide on a location where your service to be hosted. Currently, the following locations are supported:

• Dallas (us-south)
• London (eu-gb)
• Frankfurt (eu-de)
• Sydney (au-syd)
• Madrid (eu-es)
• Toronto (ca-tor)
• Tokyo (jp-tok)
• Osaka (jp-osa)
• Sao Paulo (br-sao)
• Montreal (ca-mon)
• Washington DC (us-east)
• Chennai (in-che)
• Mumbai (in-mum)

Decide on a pricing plan

{: #en-decide-pricing-plans} {: step}

Based on your business requirements, decide on a pricing plan. Currently, the following plans are available: Lite, and Standard.

• Lite: This plan gives you unlimited ingested events, 10 topics, two filters per topic, five destinations, 20 outbound emails, 20 outbound SMSes, 20 outbound webhooks (including Slack, with a limit of 20 Slack messages), and 1000 notifications per push destination (cumulative per instance, including Android, iOS, Huawei devices, and Chrome, Firefox, Safari browsers; the instance is disabled once the limit is reached). Ten subscriptions are allowed, and a subscription can have a maximum of three email recipients.

  Custom Email and Custom SMS destinations are not supported by Lite Plan. {: note}

• Standard: You are charged for ingested events and for outbound digital messages. An ingested event is one that is received and filtered. If a source is connected but no filters are defined for it (that is, the source is not associated with any topic), the incoming events are dropped, and you are not charged. Outbound digital messages come in various types, and each type is priced separately.

  You can use Pre-production destination, as a low-cost push destination, for your development and test environments. You can change the Pre-production destination to Production destination post completion of your development and testing. This feature is only available for Standard pricing plan. {: note}

Changing plans from a chargeable plan (Standard) to free plan (Lite) is not permitted as this may result in disruption and data loss due to the plan limitations. {: important}

Choose an event source

{: #en-decide-event-source} {: step}

You can create either an API Source or an {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} source. To learn the more about the process of adding a source, see Adding an Event Notifications source.

An API source indicates that the Event originated outside of {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} and is sent to {{site.data.keyword.en_short}} service through API calls.

An {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} source indicates a service on {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} that can emit events to {{site.data.keyword.en_short}} service.

The source {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} Resource Lifecycle Events is a built-in source. This source emits resource lifecycle events to {{site.data.keyword.en_short}} service. This is disabled by default and needs to be enabled.

The other {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} sources must be first integrated from the respective services to start emitting events to {{site.data.keyword.en_short}} service.

The list of IBM provided sources is as follows:

• {{site.data.keyword.monitoringfull_notm}}{: external}
• Security and Compliance{: external}
• {{site.data.keyword.secrets-manager_short}}{: external}
• {{site.data.keyword.appconfig_short}}{: external}
• IBM Cloud Projects{: external}
• Toolchain{: external}
• watsonx.data{: external}
• OpenPages{: external}
• {{site.data.keyword.logs_full_notm}}
• {{site.data.keyword.cephaas_full_notm}}
• watsonx.governance

Choose an event destination

{: #en-decide-event-destination} {: step}

A destination is a delivery target for a notification. Two destination categories are supported: human and service.

To learn the more about the process of creating a destination, see Creating an Event Notifications destination.

Human destinations

{: #en-destination-human}

Human destinations are devices, servers, or applications that present notifications for human consumption. The following human destinations are supported:

• Email Destinations
  • Inbuilt Email
  • IBM Cloud Email service with custom domain
• SMS Destinations
  • Inbuilt SMS
  • Custom SMS
• Microsoft® Teams
• PagerDuty
• Push notifications
  • Android Push Notifications (FCM)
  • iOS Push Notifications (APNs)
  • Chrome Push Notifications
  • Firefox Push Notifications
  • Safari Push Notifications
  • Huawei Push Notifications
• Slack
• ServiceNow

Service destinations

{: #en-destination-service}

Service destinations are cloud services or applications where notifications are consumed programmatically. The following service destinations are supported:

• Webhook
• {{site.data.keyword.codeengineshort}}
• {{site.data.keyword.cos_full_notm}}
• {{site.data.keyword.messagehub}}
• {{site.data.keyword.appconfig_notm}}

Create a topic

{: #en-getting-started-create-topic} {: step}

A topic is needed to filter the incoming events from the Source. Each source is connected to a topic through a user-defined filter. Notifications that pass into a topic are pushed to all subscribed destinations. A topic can connect to multiple sources and has an independent filter for each source that is connected to it. Configure topics as needed and {{site.data.keyword.en_short}} handles the routing and delivering of alerts reliably to the correct destinations.

To learn the more about the process of creating a topic, see Creating a topic.

Create a subscription

{: #en-getting-started-create-subscription} {: step}

Destinations subscribe to topics. Multiple destinations can subscribe to a single topic. An email subscription is a list of all emails IDs, and an SMS subscription is a list of all phone numbers that a notification is routed to. A webhook subscription links a webhook destination to a topic.

To learn the more about the process of creating a subscription, see Creating a subscription.

Once you have created the subscription, you will receive a notification at the destination chosen previously whenever an event occurs.

As an alternative to the console-based approach, you can also use Terraform IBM Modules (TIM) to provision and configure {{site.data.keyword.en_short}} instances using Infrastructure as Code(IaC) automation. The Terraform IBM Modules (TIM) for {{site.data.keyword.en_short}}{: external} provides a standardized, tested approach for deploying {{site.data.keyword.en_short}} with best practices built in. These modules are pre-built, open-source, and enterprise-ready that follow {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} security best practices. {: tip}