wiki:BluePrint/Messaging

Version 161 (modified by Fran Boon, 11 years ago) ( diff )

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Blueprint for the Messaging Framework

Table of Contents

  1. Current Status
  2. Core Architecture
  3. Parser
  4. Channels
    1. APRS
    2. CAP
    3. Email
      1. Rich Text
    4. SMS
      1. SMPP
    5. Twitter
      1. ToDo
      2. Links
    6. XForms
    7. XMPP
  5. Alternate implementations
  6. Use Cases

Current Status

See DeveloperGuidelines/Messaging

See also UserGuidelines/Messaging

Core Architecture

See BluePrint/Messaging/DataModel

Also see BluePrint/Messaging/Old

Parser

See BluePrint/Messaging/Parser

Channels

APRS

We would like to be able to connect to the Automatic Packet Reporting System used by Amateur Radio networks:

CAP

See the CAP Broker BluePrint

Email

The email settings should be made web-configurable as part of the Messaging Module

  • however also need to be used by Auth (order issues)

Rich Text

We'd like to be able to send HTML mails for rich-text support (including attachments) This requires the use of smtplib to send MIME-encoded files:

SMS

Support both online gateways (such as Clickatell, ​AWS SES or SMPP-compatible) & local hardware such as:

The SMS Handler Daemon to handle Inbound messages is a separate Python script.

  • Routes incoming message according to whether it's using specialist micro-syntax (e.g. submitting an XForm to another controller)
  • Non-XForms messages get sent to the Ticketing module's Master Message Log
  • Tagged messages also get Routed to the appropriate area (Project / Location / Organisation)

It can distinguish between simple messages (added to the Inbox of the Messaging Module) & those which are encoded in Binary XML (the output of XForms from the J2ME client).

Implementation details are here:

We use Cron to check Outbox & signal the daemon to send Pending messages (as for email)

SMS alerts (security alerts more common than natural disasters):

  • Being able to trigger an SMS alert broadcast upon reception of an SMS
    • Is this just an XForm to a Group? (Can we pre-populate the XForm to do this whenever a certain number is called or just a single word routes here?)

SMS login / data entry / reports

Would be good to add an LCR (Least-Cost Routing engine) for SMS deliveries (so that e.g. local messages routed via modem, but International via Gateway).

Toolkits we can base on:

Hardware compatibility databases:

SMPP

Twitter

Adding support for sending out/receiving alerts via Twitter & mining a hashtag for potential value:

  • store tweets from 1 or more hastags e.g. #eqnz #canterburyquake to build up a local repo of all relevant tweets
  • be able to reply/retweet to these messages e.g. provide an official response
  • provide analytics on things like - who are the most active users and retweeters e.g. which to target for sending out messages and who is most likely to retweet
  • if possible try and cluster similar/identical tweets to reduce the amount of noise - making it faster and simpler to monitor what is going on. As well as automatic clustering, it would be nice to provide users the ability to manually drag a tweet to an existing cluster so that it is removed from the master timeline (so as to simplify the timeline viewed by the user)
  • be able to link tickets/actions to specific tweet
  • it should be possible to automatically load a hashtag that is included in all outgoing messages e.g. we would have setup #eqnz to be included in all outgoing tweets. this may change during the event e.g. the Ministry of Civil Defence Emergency Management started with #CanterburyQuake but this was soon shortened and overtaken by #eqnz as being shorter and more useable.

ToDo

  • msg.send_tweet_by_pe_id using tweepy
    • Usecases:
      • User subscribes to notifications via Twitter
      • We send out alerts to a Hashtag
  • Process Inbound messages to (one of) the Sahana instance's Twitter IDs
    • Generic messages for the InBox
    • Structured message meant for an application (create a new record or update an existing one)
  • Hashtag Harvesting: A User wants to search public hashtag(s) for tweets of interest
    1. User has a UI to create a filter of which hashtags (& keywords?) they're interested in
    2. A real-time view is returned of the Tweets which match the filter (probably using JSON)
      • # of matches
      • 1st 10(-50?) records are browseable to see what they look like
    3. If there are too many/insufficient matches then user may refine the search & repeat until they're happy
    4. User saves the query to a msg_twitter_search table 5.
      • Option A: A single table for all queries' search results is created
      • Option B: A Table is created to hold the results of the search for each record in this search table (similar to the survey module's instances)
    5. Cron queries Twitter & adds new records to the table as they are found
    6. When user opens the search results table, they can route messages to applications, e.g.
      • 'This is a Request'
      • 'This is an Assessment'
      • 'This is a Shelter'

XForms

We have controllers/xforms.py to generate XForms automatically out of Sahana models.

These can be used by the Mobile clients for data collection.

This can be used to create OCR-able Printed Forms.

XMPP

Instant Messaging & Presence including GoogleTalk:

Alternate implementations

Use Cases

Security Management

  • Allow users to subscribe for SMS security alerts
    • Ideally allow subscription via SMS too (with optional confirmation by admin staff)
  • Allow security staff to broadcast security alerts by sending the alert to a single number & have it propagate on
    • Security for this managed by either pre-registering their numbers as valid or by logging-in 1st
    • End-users should be able to report back their status via SMS
    • Security staff should receive a report via SMS of who hasn't reported in (ideally with last known Location).

Volunteer Management

  • Allow team leaders to be able to send messages to their team members.
  • Allow team members to select which communications means (Email/SMS/Twitter) to use for both normal & priority messages.

​http://www.ch16.org/reports/

  • Allow users to submit reports via SMS/Email/Twitter/​iPadio.
  • Allow users to subscribe to updates via SMS/Email/RSS.

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