Immediate processing and sending

If you’re already familiar with Auron Omni you’ll know how responsive it feels. Sending and processing messages happens immediately.

This is because of the built in notification broker. The notification broker runs in the Auron Omni service. It works together with the message bus to make processing immediate.

In the next section we explain the broker in context. To learn if this is something you need to know about skip to: When do I use the broker API?

The notification broker

The notification broker has two main purposes:

• It reduces unnecessary database access by removing the need to poll the database
• It makes message sending and processing immediate

This is a schematic representation of the notification broker:

Auron Omni – Notification broker

On the left side of this schematic is an application that uses the Auron Omni API. On the right side is the Auron Omni service that runs the broker. Since both sides run in separate processes, socket communication is used between them.

The “App using API” represents every application that needs immediate sending or processing. This includes:

• The Auron Omni Manager
• The Auron Omni channels
• The Web Messenger
• Any custom application or script that uses the local API or direct database integration

Notification broker or polling

The notification broker reduces the need for polling the database. However, there is still a polling frequency configured in the server options. These are the “Check triggers interval” and the “Check outgoing interval” in the processing tab.

This is how it works:

1. Every cycle the service checks if there is anything to do
2. First it verifies whether the polling intervals have expired
3. Next it checks if the notification broker has any notifications
4. If the broker has notifications it handles them and resets the polling intervals
5. If the polling intervals expire it polls the database

This means that if the polling intervals are wide enough and traffic is consistent, no polling occurs. It is also possible to disable polling completely by setting the intervals to 0 in the server options. In that case you rely fully on the notification broker.

When do I use the broker API?

The broker API gives access to the message broker. In most cases this is handled for you and there is no need to use the broker API.

These are cases where you do not need to know about the notification broker or broker API:

• Using the Auron Omni Manager
• Using only trigger scripts and routing or blocking rules
• Using the HTTP REST API to integrate with Auron Omni
• When you are fine with the polling frequency configured in the server options

In these cases Auron Omni ensures that everything is handled immediately.

These are cases where you do need to know about the broker API:

• You need maximum responsiveness and you are integrating directly with the database
• You need maximum responsiveness and you are using the local API outside of trigger scripts

How to use the broker API

It is easy to use the broker API. As shown in the schematic above there are two main cases:

Listening for notifications

To listen for notifications you first need to start listening. Once you are listening you can check for status updates or non status updates.

A status update means there is either a new message or a change in the StatusID, TriggerStatusID, or AckStatusID of a message.

A non status update is fired for any change on any message.

Checking for status or non status updates is very fast. It only checks internal memory state and does not access the database.

Sending notifications

You can always send notifications. Call NotifyStatusUpdate or NotifyNonStatusUpdate.

Send a status update when there is a new message to process or send, or when the status of an existing message changes. A non status update does not trigger processing but does update the message view in the Auron Omni Manager.

Best practice is to work in batches. For example, add all messages first and then make a single call to NotifyStatusUpdate.

You can also send notifications directly from the database. Find more information here.

Technical considerations

To use the broker API you need Auron Omni installed. Set up an Auron Omni client configuration if you need the broker API on a client PC.

The notification broker uses socket communication over port 16725. Sending notifications requires UDP, listening requires TCP.