Welcome to Syntinel

Syntinel is a notification engine that communicates messages to a variety of endpoints and can take actions based on replies to those messages.

Description

In simplistic terms...

• Syntinel receives Signal messages from Reporters, indicating some event has occured.
• The message is formatted and sent to one or many Channels to report the event and (optionally) receive instructions on what actions to take on that event.
• Subscribers select an action to take on the event, which is sent back to Syntinel for processing.
• Syntinel then forwards the reply (called a Cue) to a Resolver which then can take actions on the event based on the Subscriber feedback.
• Finally, Status messages are logged and optional sent back to the original Channels indicating the result of the Resolver.

Glossary

Reporters - Any script, program, service, etc... that is responsible for sending messages into Syntinel.

Signal - The message sent from Reporters into Syntinel.

Channels - The configuration item that specifes a single target for a Signal message. Signals may be sent to more than one channel.

Subscribers - Client applications (Slack, Teams, Email, etc..) that receive Signals from Syntinel and display them to end clients for review or request actions to be taken.

Cue - A reply to a Signal, sent from the Subscriber back into Syntinel. This can contain information on which (if any) actions to take based on the Signal.

Resolvers - Appliations, programs or services that receive the Signal and Cue messages and take action based on those messages. (Ex: stop a service, restart a server, etc...)

Relay Tier - The Syntinel application itself. Responsible for receiving, processing and forwarding Signals, Cues and Status updates.

Signal Id - A unique, 10-character string that identifies the original Signal message received.

Action Id - A unique, 10-character string that identifies an individual reply (Cue) to a Signal message from a subscriber.

Components

Component	Description
Syntinel.Core	The core classes and interfaces that execute the relay tier of the Syntinel application.
Syntinel.Aws	A serverless implementation of Syntinel that runs on the Amazon Web Services platform. It makes use of the API Gateway, DyanmoDB and Lambda AWS services to implement the application.
Syntinel.Tester	Used primarily for developer testing of the application.

Syntinel is an open source project. The source code can be found on GitHub.

Message Flow

The normal flow of messages through Syntinel is described below :

Step	Message Type	Description
1	Signal	Event received from a reporter for simple notification or a request for action.
2	Channel Message	The Signal message is transformed into channel specific messages and delivered to the subscribers for notification or action.
3	Subscriber Reply	For actionable messages, a channel-specific reply is sent back into Syntinel.
4	Cue	Subscriber replies are converted to a common message format for processing by Syntinel.
5	Resolver Request	Cues are processed and then passed on to the appropriate resolver for resolution.
6	Status	Resolvers then submit Status updates back to Syntinel to update the original Signal message with the current status of the resolution.