Overview of Notifications

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.

Tip

Watch a video introduction to the service.

How Notifications Works

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.

Standard header metadata

When delivering messages, Notifications appends the following header metadata.

For all messages:

  • Content-Type
  • X-OCI-NS-MessageId
  • X-OCI-NS-TopicOcid
  • X-OCI-NS-TopicName
  • X-OCI-NS-MessageType
  • X-OCI-NS-UnsubscribeURL

For confirmation messages:

  • X-OCI-NS-ConfirmationURL
  • X-OCI-NS-SubscriptionId

For message signature validation:

  • X-OCI-NS-Signature
  • X-OCI-NS-Timestamp
  • X-OCI-NS-SignatureVersion
  • X-OCI-NS-SigningCertURL

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.

Delivery retry details

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.

  1. Immediate retry.
  2. Exponential backoff retry for the period of the subscription's retry duration, using the following timing:
    1. 1 minute
    2. 2 minutes
    3. 4 minutes
    4. 8 minutes
    5. 16 minutes
    6. 32 minutes
  3. Discarding of the message at the end of the retry duration.

To change a subscription's retry duration, see Updating the Delivery Policy for a Subscription.

Notifications Concepts

The following concepts are essential to working with Notifications.

friendly formatting
A setting to increase human readability of messages.

Supported subscription protocols:

Supported message types:

message
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:
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 .

    Note

    Follow best practices for integrating with Email Delivery. See Maintain a Positive Email Sender Reputation and Set Up Custom Domains for Email.
    Message contents and appearance vary by message type. See alarm messages, event messages, and connector messages.

    Some message types use Friendly formatting.

  • Function:
    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 .
    Message contents and appearance vary by message type. See alarm messages, event messages, and connector messages.
  • SMS:
    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.

    Message contents and appearance vary by message type. See SMS alarm messages and SMS connector messages.

    Available Countries and Regions

    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.

Resources that can send messages include alarms, announcement subscriptions, event rules, connectors, and contextual notifications (alarms and event rules). (A user, service, or app can also send a message through direct publication.)

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.

For metrics that track published and delivered messages, see Available Metrics: oci_notification.

Alarms

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 contextual notification can include an alarm.

This image shows Notifications in the context of alarms.

Announcement Subscriptions

An announcement subscription sends console announcement messages to the configured topic . Notifications then delivers the message to active subscriptions  in that topic.

This image shows Notifications in the context of announcement subscriptions.

Event Rules

When triggered, an event rule sends an event message to the configured topic . Notifications then delivers the message to active subscriptions  in that topic. See Managing Rules for Events.

A contextual notification can include an event rule.

This image shows Notifications in the context of event rules.

Connectors

A connector  sends a connector message to the configured topic . Notifications then delivers the message to active subscriptions  in that topic. See Managing Connectors.

This image shows Notifications in the context of 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.

This image shows Notifications as used to directly publish a message.

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.

Ways to Access Notifications

You can access the Notifications service using the Console or the Notifications REST API. Instructions for the Console, CLI, and API are included throughout this guide. For a list of available SDKs, see Software Development Kits and Command Line Interface.

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 click Infrastructure Console. You are prompted to enter your cloud tenant, your user name, and your password. Open the navigation menu and click Developer Services. Under Application Integration, click Notifications.

API: To access Notifications through API, use Notifications API.

CLI: See Command Line Reference for Notifications.

Authentication and Authorization

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 your 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, launch instances, create buckets, download objects, and so on. For more information, see Getting Started with Policies. 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 your company owns, contact your administrator to set up a user ID for you. The administrator can confirm which compartment or compartments you should be using.

Administrators: For common policies that give groups access to Notifications resources, see IAM Policies (on the Securing Notifications page).

Limits on Notifications

For a list of applicable limits and instructions for requesting a limit increase, see Service Limits. To set compartment-specific limits on a resource or resource family, administrators can use compartment quotas.

Limits for publishing messages (PublishMessage operation)

All limits are per tenancy.

Limit type Limit amount
Message size per request 64KB
Message delivery rate per endpoint for HTTP-based protocols (endpoints that begin with "http:" or "https:") 60 messages per minute
Message delivery rate per endpoint for Email protocol 10 messages per minute
Messages per minute (also known as Transactions Per Minute, or TPM) 60 per topic

Security

Learn about security for Notifications.

Grant access to topics and subscriptions. See Securing Notifications.