Auron Omni architecture
This article describes all the parts that make up Auron Omni. To learn more about the message bus architecture in Auron Omni click here.
Overview
Auron Omni is built up of a number of components that help you set up your message based application. The image below shows a schematic overview of the Auron Omni components and how they integrate in your application.
Auron Omni – Architecture
The setup installs all of these components automatically, including a number of examples and template triggers. Simply download and run the setup on your server.
In the following sections we discuss the elements of the Auron Omni architecture:
- The Auron Omni service
- The Auron Omni manager
- The Web Messenger
- The Bulk Wizard / Campaigns
We also discuss the most important Auron Omni concepts:
The Service
The service is the main engine of Auron Omni and has the following responsibilities:
- Starting and stopping channels
- Routing and blocking messages
- Running triggers
- Archiving old messages
The service runs in the background as a standard Windows service.
You can manage the Auron Omni service from the Windows Services app or from the Service Control dialog in the Auron Omni Manager.
Auron Omni Manager – Service Control
The Manager
The Auron Omni Manager is the main configuration front end of Auron Omni. Its responsibilities are:
- Browse and filter messages
- Maintain channel and routing configuration
- Create and edit trigger scripts
- Configure and start bulk messaging campaigns
- Send and reprocess messages for development, testing and troubleshooting
Find a detailed description of the Auron Omni Manager here.
The Web Messenger
The Auron Omni Web Messenger is a browser based front end of Auron Omni. With the Web Messenger, employees can send and receive messages through Auron Omni channels from their browser.
Find detailed information about the Web Messenger here.
The Bulk Wizard
There are two main ways of sending bulk messages. There is the Bulk Wizard for sending ad hoc bulk messages and there are campaigns.
Campaigns are stored bulk configurations. These can be started from the Auron Omni Manager. They can also be modified and run from a script.
Channels
Channels refer to the different communication channels that interface with providers or your infrastructure. For instance, the SMPP channel that connects to your provider or a GSM channel.
In the schematic, the channels are represented by the icons in the bottom left.
Each channel runs asynchronously in its own process and is managed by the service. This makes channels very reliable and fast.
Find a list of available channel types in Auron Omni here.
Triggers
Trigger scripts are small JavaScript, VBScript or SQL scripts that contain your business logic. You can configure a trigger script to run on an incoming message or when it reaches a specific state, such as failed or sent.
Triggers can do anything such as:
- Start external applications
- Connect to an external database
- Make web calls to REST or Graph APIs
- Create new messages or inspect received messages
- And much more
Edit trigger – Condition
API
Auron Omni has both a Local API and an HTTP REST API. Trigger scripts use the Local API to manipulate messages. You can also use the API to create external programs and scripts.
The HTTP REST API is an excellent way to integrate with Auron Omni from a website or Linux based server.
The setup package of Auron Omni contains a large number of working examples that show how to use both APIs. The API works with most Windows based development environments, including C#, .NET, ASP.NET, PHP, Delphi and more.
All examples are also available on GitHub.
The Server DB
The server database contains both the messages and the configuration of Auron Omni. In addition to the server database, you can optionally define a separate archive database where messages are archived after they reach a specified age.
The server database can be located on premise as well as in the cloud. Auron Omni works with any recent SQL Server database as well as Microsoft Azure.
You can send messages by connecting directly to the database and inserting new records.