Sending Notifications from PRTG to iPhones With Prowl For Free

Written by Dirk Paessler | Nov 1, 2009

In the past using the Short Message Service (SMS) was the easiest way to send notifications from PRTG to mobile phones. But it required a costly service provider that forwards your message via SMS. And those were not free. Now for the iPhone there is an alternate instant messaging option which is (almost) free.

All you have to do is purchase the Prowl iPhone app for a few bucks, get a free account on the Prowl website and create an HTTP action notification in PRTG.

Please follow the following steps:

Install the iPhone app "Prowl: Growl Client" which is available on the AppStore for US$ 3
Create a free user account on the Prowl website (http://prowl.weks.net/).
Log into your Prowl account on the prowl website
Go to the "Settings Page" and click the "Generate API Key" button. This will give you an API key which looks like this:
```
f7151a3684e66cf4634f77c187dca44669b67a529
```

In PRTG create a new notification (or edit an existing one), enable the "Execute HTTP Action" option and enter the following strings:

URL:
```
https://prowl.weks.net/publicapi/add
```

Postdata (please insert your API key!):

apikey=[YOUR_API_KEY_HERE]&application=[%sitename]&event=%status&description=%device %name %status %down (%message) ------ Last Result: %lastvalue Date/Time: %datetime Timezone: %timezone

That's it. Now you can associate the notification with events in your PRTG installation and - as soon as such a notification is triggered you will see this on your iphone. First you will hear a sound and see this screen:

The detailed view for the messages looks like this.

In our tests the messages were mostly delivered in just a few seconds. Only very few messages took longer (up to a few minutes).

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