Comet - Real Time Messages

The Realtime messages functionality is used to allow an application to send messages. That means there is always a sender and a receiver/listener. These are created using Realtime Messages flowchart nodes. A sender sends a messages through a particular message chanel, and the listener listens on a chanel for messages to arrive. And when a message arrives a specific action will be taken. Example: a helpdesk system uses realtime messages to send a message to an escalation chanel when a high priority problem occurs. The listener then takes appropriate action (e.g. send a text message to an escalation officer) when a message arrives.

Almost all the functionality is available through the realtime messaging nodes. However, before you can use the functionality you need to define what a message looks like.

Defining messages

To define a message, go to the webservice and comet tab in the WEM Modeler resource pane.

Open the context menu of the folder Comet messages and select New message to create a new message definition. You have to give the message a Name and optionally a Technical name. Next you add the list(s) and/or fields that should be part of your message. In other words: you can create a model of all the data that you want to be part of your message. You can not create a database list because none of the data is stored in the database: it is only used when a message is sent directly over a connection to all listeners.

When you have defined the data model of the message, you can start sending and receiving messages using the Comet Message node. As part of the flow executing the message process you can assign values to the fields created in the message definition before you trigger the send message comet node, and all active listeners will receive these values - and you can present them or work with them in the On Message Received action (for example, using a Flowchart to show the message in an overlay).