Sending messages to the operator on the platform

One of the possible methods to receive notifications is sending messages to the operator on the platform. The message to the operator represents a brief notification about alterations that have occurred in the process of the business logic execution. It talks about exactly what changes have happened, with which object and at what time.

Displaying and viewing messages

All messages are displayed in the right sidebar. For every message, the date and the time of received messages are displayed. After that, the object name is specified to which the current notification is related. Next, the message body follows.

At the same time, since a lot of different messages can be sent to the platform, they can be grouped. Accordingly, they may be viewed:

• by the “Text” group, then messages are grouped solely by content. The notifications form a separate group if they have a similar text;
• by the “Object” group, then for every object, all notifications will be collected in the single group;
• in full list called through the * icon, in this case, the messages are grouped by no feature.

In the first two cases, if several identical messages were received, the number of messages is displayed in square brackets before the object name. By clicking on such notification, it can be seen that the notifications list will expand. The number of these notifications will be equal to the number specified in the square brackets. By clicking on the separate message, then it will be fully displayed a little to the left of the sidebar and will be marked as read. At the same time, every message can be closed or deleted separately.

Besides that, the messages filtration is added to this sidebar realized by using sorting and the search bar.

The sorting can be performed by the messages receiving time or by its importance degree. In the first case, there may be displayed the notifications received, for example, from an hour to now from month to date. In the second case, only informational, important, or critical notifications may be displayed. Each degree of importance is identified by its color: green, yellow, or red accordingly.

Besides that, the search bar is located in the sidebar where the object name or some part of a notification body can be entered. Then only relevant ones will be displayed to the user from all list of the notifications.

All received messages are saved in the history. Firstly, there is specified the time period for which it is necessary to display the notifications. It can be counted from some certain moment, as in the sorting case, or the interval can be entered for boundaries of which date and time are set strictly. After that, filters may be set by the fact of reading the message and by its importance. It is worth to note that the notifications are not grouped in the history, as in the sidebar. Therefore, there may be met a lot of similar messages.

If there are too many notifications, they may be fully deleted by using the button “Clear” located on the messages sidebar.

If necessary, you can turn on the sound of notifications by clicking on the special icon located next to the name of the “Messages” panel.

Messages formation

Sending messages to the operator on the platform is implemented by adding the command “Message to the operator”. It can be appended on entering into the state or on exit from it by designing the automation scenario in the “Logic” menu.

By clicking on the line with the name of the command itself, then the sidebar will appear on the right to form the message. It is necessary to specify the message importance and its body. There are three degrees of the message importance in the system:

• informational;
• important;
• critical.

If it should be informed about committing some transition or event, which is not critically important, then it will be enough to specify the message as the informational one. If the notification plays a more significant role, then it will have the sense to raise the message’s importance.

The message text can be any. However, it is desirable that it be short and informative for convenient display on the platform.

After choosing the message importance and specifying its body, all changes should be saved.

After the final state machine is designed and started, at the moment of the object transition to a new state, the message will be sent to the user on the platform.