Versioned Notifications
Advantages of Versioned Notifications
In PCo, a versioned notification consists of one or multiple individual notifications with different versions.
The benefits of using versioned notifications instead of normal (static) notifications are as follows:
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Versioned notifications can be managed and maintained centrally for multiple PCo installations via SAP MII. For more information, see the SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence documentation under Notification Management. In this case, the versioned notifications can only be displayed in PCo. Changes need to be made directly in SAP MII.
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However, you can create versioned notifications locally for an individual PCo installation via the PCo Management Console. The versioned notifications created in the PCo Management Console can only be changed in the Management Console.
The benefits of creating versioned notifications locally in the PCo Management Console are as follows:
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In contrast to normal notifications, versioned notifications can be added to a running agent instance and be activated in due course without the agent instance having to be paused. This ensures that notification messages, which have not yet been sent, of the notification that was active until now can continue to be processed without any loss of data.
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You can pause the output of an individual versioned notification for a running agent and resume it later, without having to stop the agent instance for this.
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Versions of a Notification
The following notification versions can occur:
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Draft version
Each newly created versioned notification first generates a notification with the status Draft. These notification versions can also be added when an agent instance is running and can be changed as required. You maintain the subscription items of a draft notification specifically for this notification so that there are no reciprocities or naming conflicts with the subscription items of other notifications. A draft notification does not send any notification messages when an agent instance is running. There can only be one draft version for one versioned notification.
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Current version
You generate the current version of a notification by activating the draft version. A current version behaves like a normal, static notification and sends notification messages based on the subscription items assigned to it when an agent instance is running. A versioned notification can have maximum one current version.
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Expiring version
The expiring version of a notification results when a draft version is activated from the previous current notification version. It makes sure that any notification messages in the message queue that are not yet sent can still be delivered. However, the expiring version of a notification no longer receives any data from the source system. Therefore, the assigned subscription items are removed from it. If the agent instance is running, the expiring version is deleted automatically after a specific time, provided that all messages that are still in the queue are processed. If the agent is stopped, you can delete the expiring notification versions manually.
Features
You can interrupt the output of a versioned notification both when an agent is running and when it is stopped. The running and the expiring notification version no longer send any notification messages until you resume the output again. You can also use versioned notifications within the same agent instance together with normal static notifications.