Webhooks

Webhooks let you send new mentions to an external URL in real time. Use this to pipe mentions into Slack, Zapier, n8n, Make, or any custom tool that accepts HTTP requests.

Setting up a webhook

Webhooks are configured from the Scouts page under the Integrations section at the bottom:

1. Go to the Scouts page
2. Find the Webhooks card in the Integrations section
3. Click Configure
4. Enable webhooks and enter your webhook URL
5. Save

Once enabled, all your scouts send new mentions to the webhook URL. You can configure per-scout match score filtering to control which posts trigger the webhook — by default, all posts are sent regardless of match score.

Testing

Click Test webhook to send a sample payload to your URL. This lets you verify the connection works and inspect the data format before real mentions start flowing.

Payload format

ForumScout sends a POST with a JSON body. Every delivery contains the scout that fired, an array of mentions, and a mention_count.

{
  "event": "new_mentions",
  "timestamp": "2026-01-01T09:15:00Z",
  "webhook": { "id": "6620f1...", "name": "Slack alerts" },
  "scout": { "id": "65f3aa...", "query": "forumscout" },
  "mentions": [
    {
      "title": "@Jamie Rivera on LinkedIn",
      "url": "https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:123",
      "snippet": "We just swapped our social listening stack over to ForumScout.",
      "source": "LinkedIn",
      "domain": "linkedin.com",
      "author": "Jamie Rivera",
      "author_headline": "Head of Growth at Example Co | B2B SaaS",
      "date": "2026-01-01 09:12:00",
      "sentiment": "Positive",
      "match_score": 92,
      "engagement": { "likes": 128, "comments": 14, "shares": 6 }
    }
  ],
  "mention_count": 1
}

The event field tells you which delivery you're handling:

• new_mentions — a scout found new posts
• existing_mentions — a backfill from "Sync existing mentions" (also includes a batch_info object, since backfills are sent in batches of 250)
• test — the Test webhook button

LinkedIn-only fields

Two fields only carry data for LinkedIn mentions:

• author_headline — the author's LinkedIn headline (their role and company, e.g. "Head of Growth at Example Co"). Useful for qualifying whether a mention came from someone worth replying to. This field is present on every mention but is an empty string for non-LinkedIn sources.
• engagement — reaction, comment, and share counts on the post. This key is only present on LinkedIn mentions that have engagement data, so read it defensively (e.g. mention.engagement?.likes) rather than assuming it exists. likes is LinkedIn's total reaction count across all reaction types, not just "Like".

Engagement counts are a snapshot from the moment the post was found. Webhooks fire once per new mention, so the numbers you receive won't be updated later — a post delivered minutes after it went up will usually show lower counts than it has by the time you read the alert.

Syncing existing mentions

When configuring a webhook, you can check Sync existing mentions on save to replay all previously found mentions to your webhook URL. This backfills your external tool with data you've already collected.

Match score filtering

By default, each scout sends all posts to the webhook regardless of AI filter score. In the webhook configuration modal, expand Per-Scout Settings to toggle this per scout. When "Send all" is unchecked for a scout, only posts scoring above your default match score threshold are sent. Posts below the threshold still appear in your ForumScout feed but won't trigger the webhook.

This is useful when you want to see everything in ForumScout but only get notified about high-confidence matches.

Use cases

• Slack notifications — Send high-relevance mentions to a Slack channel so your team sees them immediately
• Zapier / Make / n8n — Trigger automations when new mentions arrive (e.g., create a CRM task, add to a Notion database)
• Custom dashboards — Feed mentions into your own analytics tools
• Alerting — Trigger PagerDuty or similar for urgent negative mentions

Tips

• Set a high match score for noisy scouts — If a scout generates a lot of results, use a higher webhook threshold so you only get pinged for the most relevant ones.
• Test before going live — Always use the test button to confirm your endpoint receives data correctly.
• Sync existing mentions after setup — If you add a webhook after your scouts have been running, enable "Sync existing mentions on save" to backfill your external tool.