8
Alerts

Oracle offers two kinds of alerts: reminders and notifications. Reminders are messages sent a specified amount of time in advance of a meeting or event, to alert users to the upcoming events in their agendas. Notifications are messages sent when a meeting or event is created, modified or deleted, to let the attendees know of the change to their schedules.

This chapter contains general considerations relating to the server-side implamentation of reminders and notifications. See also the documentation for Oracle9iAS Wireless, which provides reminders and notifications through a number of channels including voice mail, FAX and Short Message Service (SMS).

• Reminders
• Notification
• Setting up wireless services

The Corporate-Wide Services daemon is responsible for delivering reminders and notifications through e-mail and wireless services. When it has an alert to deliver via e-mail, it sends the alert by SMTP to the mail server specified by the unison.ini [CWS] smtpmailhost parameter (if present), which delivers the message to its intended recipient. When it has an alert to deliver via SMS or any other technology supported by Oracle9iAS Wireless, the CWS calls the sendalert program specified by the unison.ini [CWS] smsnotifyprogram parameter (if present), which delivers the message to an instance of Oracle9iAS Wireless PIM Notification Dispatcher.

Filtering e-mail alerts

The CWS includes MIME headers in all e-mail alerts to allow users to easily filter them, either to specific folders or to another application, such as a pager delivery system. All e-mail alerts include the following MIME header:

X-Oracle-Calendar: 1

All e-mail reminders include the following MIME header:

X-Oracle-Calendar-Reminder: 1

Reminders

Types

Some Oracle clients offer reminders that pop up or appear in the user's agenda in advance of a meeting; these types of reminders are implemented on the client side. The calendar server is only involved in the case of reminders sent by e-mail or through Oracle9iAS Wireless.

Format

The format of the reminder delivered by the calendar server is determined by template files installed in /users/unison/etc/reminder, according to the delivery mechanism (e-mail or wireless) and language of the user (if set). These files may be customized, but if you plan to modify a reminder template file, note that all must be stored in the UTF-8 character set.

Controlling reminder behaviour

CWS operation

You can control the frequency with which the Corporate-Wide Services daemon/service checks for reminders using the unison.ini [NOTIFY] checkreminderinterval parameter, and the amount of time that the CWS will spend checking any given node for reminders using the unison.ini [NOTIFY] limitremindercheck parameter.

Old reminders

Reminders will not be sent for any event if the reminder time is set to a time before the current time when that event is created. For example, if a new meeting is created with a start time five minutes from now, and a reminder set to be delivered ten minutes before the start time of that meeting, that reminder will not be sent by the calendar server.

In any other case, if the CWS finds that the scheduled delivery time of a reminder is before the current time, that reminder will still be delivered up to 30 minutes after the intended delivery time. You can customize this value using the unison.ini [NOTIFY] ignoreoldreminders parameter.

Notification

Types

E-mail and wireless notifications are handled differently.

When a user creates, modifies or deletes an event using an Oracle calendar client, he or she may choose to notify the attendees by e-mail. This e-mail is passed from the client to the CWS for delivery.

Wireless notification, however, is not decided by the user creating, modifying or deleting the event. Instead, users can specify in their calendar clients (if their clients support the feature) whether they wish to be notified via wireless services when meetings or events to which they are invited are created, modified or deleted.

Format

E-mail notifications are passed to the SMTP server with the same text formatting used by the calendar client.

Controlling notification behaviour

Disabling e-mail notification

You can disable e-mail notification entirely in all clients by setting the unison.ini [LIMITS] mail parameter to FALSE.

Limiting the number of recipients

If necessary in order to avoid strain on your mail server, you can limit the number of recipients for any given notification message using the unison.ini [LIMITS] maxmaildistr parameter.

Setting up wireless services

When you install the calendar server, you will be asked whether you want to configure wireless services, and if so, you will be prompted for all the necessary information. If you choose not to configure your calendar server for wireless services at installation time, you can use the following manual procedure to set up wireless services afterward.

1. Stop all calendar servers in your network.
2. Edit the /users/unison/misc/unison.ini file on each host.
3. Set the following parameter values:

   [NOTIFY]
   sms = TRUE
   
   [CWS]
   smsnotifyprogram = sendalert
   smsnotifyprogramparam = "-host <hostname> -port <portnumber>"
   
   

   In place of the <hostname> and <portnumber> variables in the smsnotifyprogramparam parameter example given above, supply the host name and port number of an instance of Oracle9iAS Wireless PIM Notification Dispatcher.

   If you do not know the host name and port number of an instance of Oracle9iAS Wireless PIM Notification Dispatcher, you can find out using theWireless system management area of Oracle Enterprise Manager. For more details, consult the Oracle9iAS Wireless documentation.

4. Restart all calendar servers stopped in step 1.