What is a Delivery Channel?
A Delivery Channel provides the means to deliver messages. Previous versions of
Connect only supported two delivery channels:
- Email Messages via SMTP: The email delivery channel is configured with
information such as the mail farm locations and how many concurrent connections
should be maintained to the mail farm hosts
- SMS Messages via SMPP: The SMS delivery channel is configured with
information about the SMSC servers, connection pool size, etc.
Now, Delivery Channels are facilitated using software components that implement an
API in the Connect architecture. Email, SMS, iOS Push, Android (GCM) Push, Fax, and
Twitter are all delivery channels implemented in Connect. Since delivery channels
are now explicit software components, delivery channels can be selectively deployed,
and new delivery channels can be implemented and deployed without requiring changes
or customizations to the Connect base code.
Delivery Channel Address Attributes
Delivery Channels deliver messages and therefore require an “address” to be stored
for each customer record. These addresses are stored inn customer attributes. Each
delivery channel is associated with an attribute appropriate to the messaging
service and stores the endpoint address for that delivery channel.
Connect assumes that one attribute is sufficient to store the endpoint address for
each deliver channel. For example, for iOS push (APNS) channel, the endpoint address
is the device token provided by the iOS runtime when the iOS application registers
for remote notifications
Deploying Delivery Channels
Connect has the ability for multiple active deployments to share the same database
schema. Each active deployment is known as a 'Cluster' or 'Message Cluster', and
consists of inside nodes (Conversation Manager, Profiler, etc) and outside nodes
(Mail Senders, SMPP Senders, Trackers, etc.). Each Delivery Channel must be deployed
to a Cluster before the Cluster can send messages using the Delivery
Channel.
Note: Email and SMS channels are an exception to this. The email channel
is deployed to the cluster automatically when the Mail Sender and Receiver
components are deployed. The SMS channel is automatically deployed when the SMPP
Sender and Receiver components are deployed. Every other Delivery Channel
executes within the Mail Sender/Receiver or within the SMPP Sender/Receiver
components.
Other Delivery Channels (besides than email and SMS) must be
explicitly deployed to a cluster before being used. This deployment process is
performed in two steps:
- The Delivery Channel is configured in the Connect UI
- The Delivery Channel is deployed to a Connect Cluster
