LobbyCentral Appointment Broker User Guide (On-Premise)

Overview

The Appointment Broker is an on-premise Windows service that allows LobbyCentral to communicate with the LobbyCentral Appointments service and vice versa. 

It is a required component to use LobbyCentral Appointments. 

This document will explain the set up procedures and review issues regarding security. 

Prerequisites

• LobbyCentral On-Premise version 7.1.2 or higher 
• Windows Server 2003 or higher (2008 is the minimum recommend OS) 
• Microsoft .NET 4.5 

Communication Overview

The AB (Appointment Broker) service listens on a private channel on the Appointment Message server. This is required so that the Appointments service can communicate with the AB server. 

The AB application is a light-weight web service that connects directly to the LobbyCentral database. It does not interact with the LobbyCentral application directly. 

Data sent from the AB server to the Appointment service is over HTTPS. 

Endpoint

Production LobbyCentral Appointments Service:    https://schedule.lobbycentral.com/

Installation

Important. You must install the Appointment Broker in the below order.

1. Register for a LobbyCentral Appointments account at https://schedule.lobbycentral.com

2. On the Account page, copy your Subscriber ID and Token. 

3. Log into LobbyCentral and go to Administration, System Options. 

4. Click the Online Appointments tab 

5. Copy and paste the Subscriber ID and Token from LobbyCentral Appointments. 

6. Click Submit 

7. Download LobbyCentral Appointment Broker from https://support.lobbycentral.com/article/510-lobbycentral-downloads-onpremise

The appointment broker is now configured to accept appointments from the Appointment service. You can proceed with configuring LobbyCentral Appointments. 

Communication Process

1. The Appointment Broker listens on a private channel (identified by your token) for messages sent from the LobbyCentral scheduling server in the cloud. 

2. When a message is received, the Appointment Broker first compares the token in the packet to verify that it matches your private token. 

3. Data is the sent to the LobbyCentral scheduling server with the unique transaction id that was sent to the appointment broker. 

4. The scheduling server validates the toke and transaction ID before passing through the data.