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How the LRA process works

Customer fills out and submits an LRA Configuration form. Information about the customer is added to or updated in the database. To accomplish this, a handler named I3LRAAdminIncomingMailMessage on the support provider's IC server monitors the LRA monitored mailbox. When an incoming update request message is received, it invokes a process named I3LRADBLoaderU.exe to update database tables that store information about LRA customers and configurations.
A support associate or customer fills out a HTML-based LRA request form. When the form is submitted, client-side code in the HTML page composes a formatted email message.
The next step depends upon the version of CIC used. In releases before IC 2.3, a script in the HTML page calls a COM DLL named I3LRAMgrU.DLL to send the email message to the customer's Monitored Mailbox 0. This is the Email account associated with the CIC administrator. In IC 2.3 and later, monitored mailbox 0 can be associated with any email account using the LRA plug-in for Interaction Administrator. However, customers are strongly encouraged to dedicate this mailbox for LRA's exclusive use.
When the message arrives at the customer's CIC server, a handler named I3LRAMonitorMailbox fires.
If a server parameter named LRADomains exists, the handler checks to see if the Email originated from a domain listed in LRADomains. If the Email message did not originate from a known domain, the handler terminates. If LRADomains does not exist, no domain checking is performed.
Next, the handler looks at the subject of the email message to ensure that it is formatted as follows:

I3LRARequest|[IC_Servername]|[now|deferred]

The subject must begin with I3LRARequest to indicate that it is an LRA request message. If the subject of the message is invalid, the handler terminates.

IC_Servername is the name of the server that the handler is executing on. The third parameter controls whether the request is processed immediate or is deferred:
- now indicates that the request should be processed immediately.
- deferred indicates that the request should be processed at a later time, specified in LRA's configuration.
The only messages that LRA deletes from the customer's mailbox are request messages that LRA has recognized and processed. LRA does not delete messages that it does not recognize.
Once the message has been validated, the I3LRAMonitorMailbox handler creates an LRA request message in the I3ICServerLRARequests folder. If the message is marked for immediate action, the handler runs I3LRAU.exe to process the request. The filename of the request message is I3LRARequest_YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.REQ. The request name is unique, since it is based upon the current date and time.
Every 15 minutes, a handler named I3LRATimerInitiator starts a server process named I3LRAU.EXE to process pending request files.
At startup, I3LRAU looks in the requests directory for unprocessed requests. It also checks for other running instances of itself (up to 5) to see if any of them have been active for more than 20 minutes. If an instance is not making progress, and has persisted for more than 20 minutes, it is terminated.
If request files are present, I3LRAU reads each file to find out what data it should extract. It retrieves the requested data and stages it in the working directory inside one or more encrypted .zip files. If the Autosend configuration parameter is checked, I3LRAU initiates an FTP file transfer to transmit files to the requester's FTP directory.
I3LRAU sends an email message to the requestor to notify that it is processing the request, or that it cannot process the request due to server down condition, invalid FTP configuration, FTP file transfer error, etc.
If the request was for an installation, configuration, trace level, or Dr. Watson-related change, LRA sends an update request email message to the requester's CIC server.
When all FTP transfers for a request are complete, I3LRAU sends an email notification to the requestor. This message indicates that the file transfer is complete and also specifies the directory where files were uploaded.
I3LRAU deletes the processed request from the requests directory, and deletes processed .zip files from the working directory. It then repeats steps 9-11 until it has processed all remaining request files. I3LRAU terminates when there are no additional files left to process.