Use the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Notifications service to set up communication channels for publishing messages using topics and subscriptions.
The Notifications service lets you know when something happens with your resources in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Using alarms, event rules, and connectors, you can get human-readable messages through supported endpoints, including email and text messages (SMS). You can also automate tasks through custom HTTPS endpoints and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Functions. You can also directly publish messages.
The Notifications service enables you to set up communication channels for publishing messages using topics and subscriptions . When a message is published to a topic, the Notifications service sends the message to all of the topic's subscriptions.
When a subscriber's endpoint does not acknowledge receipt of the message, the Notifications service retries delivery. This situation can occur when the endpoint is offline. For example, the email server for an email address may be down.
Notifications retries delivery following these steps until either (a) acknowledgement is received or (b) the subscription's retry duration is over. By default, the retry duration is two hours.
Immediate retry.
Exponential backoff retry for the period of the subscription's retry duration, using the following timing:
1 minute
2 minutes
4 minutes
8 minutes
16 minutes
32 minutes
Discarding of the message at the end of the retry duration.
The content that is published to a topic. Each message is delivered at least once per subscription. Every message sent out as email contains a link to unsubscribe from the related topic.
notification
A configuration for sending messages, such as an alarm or event rule. Each message is sent to subscriptions in the specified topic.
The following types of notifications are available:
Contextual notification: Created from a quick start template or focused options that are relevant to the given resource.
After creating the notification, you can manage it as usual. For example, if the notification is an alarm, manage it using the Alarms page in the Console.
subscription
An endpoint for a topic. Published messages are sent to each subscription for a topic.
Supported subscription protocols:
Email:
Sends an email message when you publish a message to the subscription's parent topic .
Runs the specified function when you publish a message to the subscription's parent topic . For example, runs a function to resize VMs when an associated alarm is triggered.
HTTPS (Custom URL):
Sends specified information when you publish a message to the subscription's parent topic .
PagerDuty:
Creates a PagerDuty incident by default when you publish a message to the subscription's parent topic .
Slack:
Sends a message to the specified Slack channel by default when you publish a message to the subscription's parent topic .
Sends a text message using Short Message Service (SMS) to the specified phone number when you publish a message to the subscription's parent topic . Supported endpoint formats: E.164 format.
Note
International SMS capabilities are required if SMS messages come from a phone number in another country. We continuously add support for more countries so that more users can receive SMS messages from local phone numbers.
SMS subscriptions are enabled only for messages sent by the following Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services: Announcements, Monitoring, and Connector Hub.SMS messages sent by unsupported services are dropped.See Cause: Unsupported resource used for SMS.
The Notifications service delivers SMS messages from a preconfigured pool of numbers. You might receive SMS messages from multiple numbers.
You can use Notifications to send SMS messages to the following countries and regions:
Country or region
ISO code
Australia
AU
Brazil
BR
Canada
CA
Chile
CL
China
CN
Costa Rica
CR
Croatia
HR
Czechia
CZ
France
FR
Germany
DE
Hungary
HU
India
IN
Ireland
IE
Israel
IL
Japan
JP
Lithuania
LT
Mexico
MX
Netherlands
NL
New Zealand
NZ
Norway
NO
Philippines
PH
Poland
PL
Portugal
PT
Romania
RO
Saudi Arabia
SA
Singapore
SG
South Africa
ZA
South Korea
KR
Spain
ES
Sweden
SE
Switzerland
CH
Ukraine
UA
United Arab Emirates
AE
United Kingdom
GB
United States
US
topic
A communication channel for sending messages to subscriptions. Each topic name is unique across the tenancy.
Note
Messages sent out as email by the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Notifications service are processed and delivered through Oracle resources in U.S.-based regions.
Flow of Message Publication and Delivery 🔗
Resources publish messages to the configured topic . Notifications then delivers messages to active subscriptions in the topic.
For example, consider an alarm configured to send messages to a topic. This topic contains email, Slack, and SMS subscriptions. When the alarm trigger rule is breached, the alarm publishes a message to the topic. Notifications then delivers the message to the topic's active subscriptions. In this example, the Slack subscription is pending because it hasn't been confirmed yet. Notifications delivers the message to the email and SMS subscriptions only, because these are the only active subscriptions in the topic.
When an alarm's trigger rule is breached, the alarm sends an alarm message to the configured topic . Notifications then delivers the message to active subscriptions in that topic. See Managing Alarms.
A connector sends a connector message to the configured topic . Notifications then delivers the message to active subscriptions in that topic. See Managing Connectors.
Direct Publication 🔗
A user (or a service or app) sends a message to the configured topic . Notifications then delivers the message to active subscriptions in that topic. See Publishing a Message to a Topic.
Creating Automation with Functions and Events 🔗
You can create automation by publishing messages to topics that include function subscriptions. For an example of a function subscription, see Scenario A: Automatically Resizing VMs.
You can create also automation based on state changes of topics and subscriptions (Notifications resources) by using event types, rules, and actions.
Availability 🔗
The Notifications service is available in all Oracle Cloud Infrastructure commercial regions. See About Regions and Availability Domains for the list of available regions, along with associated locations, region identifiers, region keys, and availability domains.
Service Comparison for Sending Email Messages 🔗
Consider the following service features when deciding whether to use the Notifications service or the Email Delivery service to send your email messages. For more information about Email Delivery, see Overview of the Email Delivery Service.
Service Feature
Notifications service
Email Delivery service
Requires confirmation before sending email.
Yes
No
Allows email decorations, such as signatures.
Yes
No
Allows raw email messages.
No
Yes
Supports MIME attachments.
No
Yes
Supports special handling for failed email delivery.
No
Yes
Priced for small messages (less than 32 KB, with a 64-KB limit).
Yes
No
Priced for large messages (greater than 32 KB, with a 2-MB limit).
No
Yes
Resource Identifiers 🔗
Most types of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources have a unique, Oracle-assigned identifier called an Oracle Cloud ID (OCID). For information about the OCID format and other ways to identify your resources, see Resource Identifiers.
Console: To access Notifications using the Console, you must use a supported browser. To go to the Console sign-in page, open the navigation menu at the top of this page and select Infrastructure Console. You are prompted to enter your cloud tenant, your user name, and your password.
Open the navigation menu and select Developer Services. Under Application Integration, select Notifications.
Each service in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure integrates with IAM for authentication and authorization, for all interfaces (the Console, SDK or CLI, and REST API).
An administrator in an organization needs to set up groups , compartments , and policies that control which users can access which services, which resources, and the type of access. For example, the policies control who can create new users, create and manage the cloud network, create instances, create buckets, download objects, and so on. For more information, see Managing Identity Domains. For specific details about writing policies for each of the different services, see Policy Reference.
If you're a regular user (not an administrator) who needs to use the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources that the company owns, contact an administrator to set up a user ID for you. The administrator can confirm which compartment or compartments you can use.