# Incoming Webhooks
Incoming webhooks allow external applications, written in the programming language of your choice--to post messages into Mattermost channels, private groups and direct messages by sending a specifically formatted JSON payload via HTTP POST request to a secret Mattermost URL generated specifically for each application.
A couple key points:
- **Mattermost incoming webhooks are Slack-compatible.** If you've used Slack's incoming webhooks to create integrations, you can copy and paste that code to create Mattermost integrations. Mattermost automatically translates Slack's proprietary JSON payload format into markdown to render in Mattermost messages
- **Mattermost incoming webhooks support full markdown.** A rich range of formatting unavailable in Slack is made possible through [markdown support](../../usage/Markdown.md) in Mattermost, including headings, formatted fonts, tables, inline images and other options supported by [Mattermost Markdown]
_Example:_
Suppose you wanted to create a notification of the status of a daily build, with a table of total tests run and total tests failed by component category, with links to failed tests by category. You could create the following JSON payload to post to a Mattermost channel using webhooks:
```
payload={"text": "
---
##### Build Break - Project X - December 12, 2015 - 15:32 GMT +0
| Component | Tests Run | Tests Failed |
|:-----------|:------------|:-----------------------------------------------|
| Server | 948 | :white_check_mark: 0 |
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