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You activate the Response Processor from the Schedule Alert Programs form. You can either start the Response Processor immediately, or schedule it to start later. When you start the Response Processor, Oracle Alert submits it as a concurrent request to the concurrent manager to run at the next scheduled interval. If the Response Processor gets deleted from the concurrent queue, simply restart it from the Schedule Alert Programs form, and this will resubmit the Response Processor to the Concurrent Manager. See: To activate or deactivate the Response Processor.

Each response account must have three folders defined in Oracle Office: the Inbox folder, the Reviewed folder, and the Reviewed_OK folder. Oracle Alert uses these folders to process responses. Consult your Oracle Office documentation to learn how to create a new folder in a mail account.

When the Response Processor runs, it moves all the messages in the Inbox folder to the Reviewed folder. Oracle Alert recognizes a message in a response account as a response message, by whether the message contains a message handle. Once the messages are in the Reviewed folder, Oracle Alert looks for messages that contain message handles. If the recipient used Reply-with-Original or Forward to include the original message with her or his response, then Oracle Alert can locate the message handle and interpret the response. See: Message Handles.

Once Oracle Alert recognizes a response message, it reads the response and tries to match the first word or the first 30 continuous characters of the response to any of the defined valid responses. If Oracle Alert finds that the actual response matches a valid response, then it performs the actions defined for that valid response. Once Oracle Alert performs the actions for that valid response, it closes the response so that no other responses are processed for that message, then moves the message to the Reviewed_OK folder.

If the actual response does not match any of the valid responses in that response set, Oracle Alert performs the actions associated with the invalid response, but leaves the message in the Reviewed folder.

Oracle Alert performs the invalid response actions each time it receives an invalid response within the follow-up days specified in the original message action. After the number of follow-up days have passed, Oracle Alert performs the no response follow-up actions for each invalid response that never received a valid response.

If Oracle Alert never receives a valid response to the alert message, it performs the no response follow-up actions for each unreturned message once the number of response days has passed, and closes responses for all messages in that response set.

Each time the Response Processor completes, the Inbox of Oracle Alert's response account is empty.

Note: Oracle Alert provides you with a precoded alert that you can use to periodically purge the Reviewed and Reviewed_OK mail folders. See: Oracle Alert Precoded Alerts.