WebSphere Commerce EnterpriseWebSphere Commerce Professional

Changing delay times for auction messages

One of the tasks of the scheduler is to send auction notification messages to customers at a specified time or interval. The scheduler is also responsible for periodically sending any unread notification messages to the customer, based on its frequency setting. You can control the length of time that a customer has to view an auction notification message before it is scheduled to be sent as an e-mail. This length of time is known as its delay time.

About this task

Controlling the delay time of an auction notification message involves changing the properties of the auction command associated with it. The following table provides a list of available auction notification messages, their content, and corresponding auction commands:

Message Content Command
StartAuction An auction has started NotifyStartAuction
BidOverride Your bid has been overridden NotifyBidOverride
CompleteOrder An order has been created for the winning bid NotifyCloseAuction
Winner You are the winner NotifyCompleteOrder

Messages are stored in the MESSAGE table. Delay times are specified in the properties column of the CMDREG table. Note that you can specify a different delay time for each kind of notification message.

To change the delay time for an auction notification message:

Procedure

  1. Suppose you want to change the delay time for the StartAuction message to 1 hour and 22 minutes. From a command prompt, enter the following SQL statement:
    
    update cmdreg set properties='day=0&hour=1&minute=22' where
         interfacename =
    'com.ibm.commerce.negotiation.commands.NotifyStartAuctionCmd'
    
  2. The NotifiyStartAuctionCmd command is updated to reflect the new delay time.
  3. To update the delay times for the other Notify commands, use similar SQL statements, replacing NotifyStartAuctionCmd with the appropriate command name.
    Tip: Make sure that the frequency setting for running the DoAuctionNotify command is appropriate for the delay times you allot for the notification messages. The recommended frequency for running the DoAuctionNotify command is ten percent of the delay times set for the notification messages.