Desktop Agent Bridging Discussion group 28th September 2022

[kriswest]

Group overview

Discussion group for developing proposals for producing bridges between FDC3 implementations (aka Desktop Agents), allowing applications running on one Desktop Agent, to integrate with FDC3 applications running on a second Desktop Agent for the same user.

The interop between applications running on different Desktop Agents aka Platforms would ideally cover

• Channels
• Raising and resolving Intents
• Launching Applications

Relevant issue tags

• Current open issues that relate to the above concepts with the label:
  
• The original issue is now a github discussion where content can be added and this issue discussed:
  Desktop Agent Bridging Discussion group #544

Meeting Date

Wednesday 28th Sept 2022 - 9am EST / 2pm BST

WebEx info

• Meeting link: https://finos.webex.com/finos/j.php?MTID=m55d4aa79e148c948bf53163690e74fee
• Meeting number: 2558 920 8729

More ways to join

• Join by video system:
  • Dial 25589208729@finos.webex.com
  • You can also dial 173.243.2.68 and enter your meeting number
• Join by phone
  • +1-415-655-0003 US Toll
  • +44-20319-88141 UK Toll
• Access code: 2558 920 8729

Meeting notices

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Agenda

• Convene & roll call, review meeting notices (5mins)
• Review action items from previous meeting (5mins)
  • Desktop Agent Bridging Discussion group 24th August 2022 #798
• NatWest Markets: Contribution of BackPlane as a Bridge implementation (25 mins)
  • Overview of contribution
  • Demo of current state
  • Discussion of next steps and how you can get involved.
• Review updates to the proposal (20 mins)
  • Current proposal [WIP] 544 desktop agent bridging proposal #634
    • Preview: https://github.com/finos/FDC3/blob/544-Desktop-Agent-Bridging-Proposal/docs/api-bridging/spec.md
    • Changes:
      • Changed meta.source -> meta.sources and errorSources in response messages to allow messaging to user when DAs don't respond
      • Adjusted pseudocode for bridge message handling for cases where we receive a timeout but also have responses from other agents to process.
      • Exempted PrivateChannels from some cases where bridge messages are not normally generated (but should be for PrivateChannels).
      • Classified message exchanges by type.
      • Completed message exchanges for broadcast, findIntent, findIntentsForContext and raiseIntent.
• AOB & Adjourn (5mins)

Minutes

• An overview and demo of Backplane was provided by the NatWest Markets team.
  • Backplane:
    • Is run as a service on one or more machines for the same user, independently of any containers or other Destkop Agent implementations
    • Successfully implements multi-machine and multi-container bridging
    • Includes client libraries for javascript and .Net applications
      • The .Net version models a single app as a desktop agent in order to support connection.
  • @kriswest commented:
    • The version demonstrated (and currently used in production at NWM) appears to use core concepts that are well aligned with the current DAB proposal, despite message formats being slightly different (as the implementation predates the proposal)
      • Multi-machine and multi-container latencies looked good.
  • A version was demonstrated that has been refactored to use the connection workflow from the current DAB proposal, including synchronization of the channel state on connect.
    • @kriswest:
      • This is a great validation of the proposal content
      • Watch out for capitalisation of field names in messages and unnecessary inclusion of null values.
  • @openfin-johans Standard set of FDC3 channels - does the Backplane have any information on the user channels of is just expecting a match of the channels?
    • BackPlane (and the proposal) are reliant on a common set of system/user channels on each agent for an ideal UX - neither support mapping of channels in the bridge.
    • .Net client had a set of channels matching Finsemble hardcoded into it - it gets state from the bridge but not that list.
  • Discussion is needed on how to best manage contributions since that NWM already has a production working version that predates this proposal, and are developing a version based on the current proposal
  • A participant asked whether the Backplane or Desktop Agent Bridging contemplate bridging external web applications (e.g. in a browser tab)
    • External web applications in a browser could leverage the provided JS client (and model themselves as a Desktop Agent managing a single application) in order to interact with apps running in containers.
    • It was noted that
      • the same could also apply to Chrome extensions (such as fdc3-desktop-agent)
      • Several vendor implementations of FDC3 desktop agents also offer adapters to connect to connect into their DA
  • @kriswest: What challenges have been encountered in the implementation of the proposal?
    • Port clashes and resilience to crash (NWM feedback on these was already incorporated into the DAB proposal)
• A brief overview of recent changes to the proposal was provided (see agenda).
  • a complete first draft is expected by next month's meeting
  • from there progress will dependent on review feedback and implementations attempts (such as the the next version of the Backplane project)

Action Items

• @tpina @kriswest Add recommendation on visual feedback to users on Agent Connect/Disconnect from bridge
• @tpina @kriswest Continue development of proposal, particularly individual message exchanges.
• All Review proposal and provide any further feedback necessary

Untracked attendees

Full name	Affiliation	GitHub username

[Julia-Ritter]

Julia / FINOS

[pierreneu]

Pierre Neu / Symphony

[tpina]

Tiago Pina / Cosaic

[ggeorgievx]

Georgi / Tick42

[kriswest]

Kris West / Cosaic

[timjenkel]

Tim Jenkel / Wellington

[mistryvinay]

Vinay Mistry / Symphony

[openfin-johans]

Johan Sandersson / OpenFin 🎁

[Julia-Ritter]

Untracked attendees:

• Manish / NatWest Markets
• Alexandru Dumitru / Citi
• Vivek Giri / NatWest Markets
• Aaron Haines / NatWest Markets
• Dimiter Georgiev / Symphony
• Rajeev Srivastava / NatWest Markets

[manish-nwm]

Manish / NWM