Using control messages with the Collector node

You can send control messages to the Collector node in order to control how complete message collections are propagated to other nodes in your message flow.

Before you begin

This task assumes that you have already created a message flow that contains a Collector node. For more information, see Creating a flow that uses message collections.

About this task

You can control when complete message collections are propagated to other nodes for processing, using messages sent to the Control terminal. The exact behavior depends on the settings that you have chosen for the Event coordination property on the Collector node. If you want to use control messages to propagate completed messages collections you must set the Event coordination property to one of the following values:
  • All complete collections
  • First complete collection
In these cases, the complete message collections are held on a queue until a control message is received. If you set Event coordination to All complete collections, all the message collections held on the queue are propagated to the Out terminal. If you set Event coordination to First complete collection, only the first message collection on the queue is propagated to the Out terminal. If there are no complete message collections on the queue, the next message collection to complete is immediately propagated to the Out terminal.

Incomplete message collections that have exceeded the value for Collection expiry are immediately propagated to the Expire terminal regardless of the setting of Event coordination.

If you want to propagate any complete message collections after a set amount of time for further processing, connect a TimeoutNotification node to the Control terminal of the Collector node. You can use the TimeoutNotification node to send a control message to propagate the message collections to ensure that messages are processing within a reasonable time, or to schedule processing tasks.

For more information about driving a message flow using the TimeoutNotification node, see Automatically generating messages to drive a flow.

Alternatively, you can propagate complete message collections using a message from another application or message flow by connecting an input node to the Control terminal of the Collector node.

You can send any message to the Control terminal of the Collector node. The message received on the Control terminal is not examined by the integration node and is discarded on receipt.