May 2023 Summaries

Knock recently launched five major features to enhance its notification platform, emphasizing a developer-first approach with flexible API primitives. The releases include an HTTP source that integrates with streaming services like Kafka and Kinesis to trigger multi-channel notifications, allowing a wider range of infrastructure to power customer-relevant alerts. A significant addition is the Knock CLI and management API, improving developer experience by enabling code interaction with Knock resources and automation within CI/CD environments. The Schedules API offers a code-first method to create recurring notification schedules with timezone awareness, while the new webhook channel extends flexibility by allowing notifications to internal services or third-party apps. The week concluded with the introduction of a subscriptions API that streamlines notifying user lists, supporting alerting and publish/subscribe models. These developments reflect Knock's commitment to providing versatile and scalable solutions for various notification needs.

Knock has introduced a new Subscriptions API that allows users to efficiently notify large groups by modeling lists of subscribers, which can be notified through a single API call. This feature is designed to enhance alerting use cases, publish/subscribe models, and dynamic follower systems by offloading the responsibility of determining notification recipients to Knock. The API supports nested object hierarchies, enabling complex resource structures such as teams with multiple projects and project members, and allows for storing custom properties about user-object relationships. Currently, there is no limit on the number of subscribers or recipients that can be stored, and there is no additional cost for creating subscriptions. The Subscriptions API is available across all Knock plans, and users can begin implementation by consulting the provided documentation and reference guides.

Knock has introduced a new webhook channel to enhance its notification engine, allowing users to notify any HTTP service while benefiting from Knock's preference management, retry logic, and observability. This feature supports two main use cases: notifying internal or third-party services and powering customer-facing webhooks, addressing customer demands for more flexible notification workflows. Users can configure the webhook channel by setting the URL, headers, parameters, and body data, and integrate it seamlessly into existing workflows. Knock manages retry logic and request logging, and offers features like signature verification for secure communications. The webhook channel is available across all Knock plans, including the free Developer plan, and notifications sent through it contribute to overall usage volume. Users can manage preferences for webhook notifications as with other Knock channels, ensuring a cohesive experience.

Knock has introduced its schedules API, a tool designed to simplify the process of creating recurring notifications without the need for managing cron jobs. This API allows users to set personalized notification schedules that are aware of recipient time zones, utilizing Knock's scalable infrastructure to handle the execution of these workflows. The API supports complex scheduling rules based on the iCalendar specification, enabling flexibility in defining notifications for different users. The schedules can be managed and debugged through the Knock dashboard, offering visibility into schedule execution and repeat rules. This development aims to relieve engineering teams of the complexities associated with cron infrastructure, ensuring reliable and scalable notification delivery as user bases grow. Additionally, Knock's new support for recipient time zones eliminates the need for manual date and time calculations, automatically adjusting schedules when a recipient's time zone changes.

Knock has introduced a new command-line interface (CLI) and management API, allowing developers to build, test, and deploy notification infrastructures entirely in code, enhancing flexibility and automation. This CLI, available to all users, enables teams to manage Knock resources such as workflows, templates, and translations directly via their terminal, integrating seamlessly into development workflows. By allowing developers to pull and push resources between their local environments and Knock’s infrastructure, the CLI facilitates changes to notification workflows and templates within the developer’s preferred integrated development environment (IDE). It also supports integration with continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, enabling automated deployment and synchronization of workflow configurations and translations. This approach simplifies localization management and aligns with common application localization frameworks. Teams like Amplitude have already benefited from the CLI by incorporating workflow configurations into their codebase and creating automated CI/CD pipelines, thus significantly improving efficiency and developer experience. Looking ahead, Knock plans to enhance its CLI and management API with features such as better integration testing, workflow schema type generation, and support for branches and source control, further aligning Knock’s developer experience with that of in-house systems without the associated maintenance burdens.

Knock has introduced a new HTTP source type, a universal connector that allows customers to trigger multi-channel notifications from any event-streaming source, such as Kafka, Kinesis, or webhooks from products like Supabase and Radar. This innovation expands on the existing Knock Sources, which previously allowed event streaming primarily from CDPs and reverse ETL platforms, by enabling any data source capable of sending a webhook to integrate with Knock's notification workflows. The update provides users with increased flexibility to use various event sources, enhancing Knock's extensibility and allowing for more dynamic notification systems. It accommodates evolving product needs by supporting diverse triggers, such as location-based services and event buses, to deliver tailored notification experiences. The HTTP source is available to all Knock customers, who can find additional implementation details in the company's documentation.