Remember the lead automation system I did for Cruise Experts Travel?

Probably not, but that’s okay! It’s up and it works nicely.

But what if something goes wrong. What if it stops polling for leads? The client won’t like that! Unfortunately, this can be discouraged but can’t be completely prevented. At least not within reason.

• The server could be turned off
• its connection could die
• The service could be halted and not restarted

These could be the result of human or program error, or environmental conditions.

Since we can’t prevent disruption, we should at least deal with it – in this case, by responding to it.

With that in mind, I made a monitoring program. It checks the temporary lead database and notifies me when any are stale. Using it, I can quickly see when something goes wrong and can act accordingly. In many cases, I should be able to respond before the client even knows there was an issue.

Since the two most likely of those cases do not directly involve me or the lead automation system, I’ve set the monitoring program up to run on one of Twisted Pear‘s computers. (The company who handles their computer and network needs).

In the third case, should it be necessary, Twisted Pear can easily restart the service as well.