Overview

ecFlowUI can observe and interact with many ecFlow servers at the same time. Server communication has the potential to be costly in terms of network usage and in waiting time, therefore ecFlowUI uses a separate execution thread for communicating with each server. This allows the user interface to remain responsive while communicating with busy servers.

Each tab in ecFlowUI is linked to a specific set of servers; if you have multiple tree or table views in a tab, they will all be linked to the same set of servers.

ecFlow servers can have a heavy load, which can impact all users, so ecFlowUI employs some strategies to reduce strain on the server. Users are encouraged to note the information below and to help reduce unnecessary server traffic.

Suite filters

To save screen space and to reduce load on the server, ecFlowUI allows you to select a subset of the available suites on a given server. Select the server node in the tree, go to the Info Panel and select Suite Filter. Enable the filter, then select just those suites of interest and click the Submit button. This informs the server that you only require updates for those suites, thus reducing network traffic and server load.

Refreshing and resetting a server

After initially loading a server's node tree, ecFlowUI will automatically refresh, or synchronise with, the server at regular intervals. This interval can be changed in the Server Settings. If a suite filter is enabled, the synchronisation process only considers those suites. There are three possible outcomes from the refresh:

• nothing has changed on the server since the last synchronisation
• minor changes have occurred, such as nodes changing their status - the changes are sent by the server and incorporated into ecFlowUI's tree
• major changes have occurred, such as nodes being added or removed - a complete new tree is sent by the server, causing a full reset of ecFlowUI's storage of the tree; this is a more costly operation

You can ask for a manual refresh of the server of the currently selected node by clicking the green refresh button which appears at the top of each panel. Doing so will reset the timer for the next automatic refresh.

When a command is sent to a server (e.g. when you Requeue a node), a refresh is automatically performed.

There are further options in the Refresh menu, allowing you to refresh or reset all servers in the current tab or just the currently selected server.

Refresh drift

In order to help reduce server load, ecFlowUI can reduce the frequency of its server synchronisations over time if there is no user interaction with the server ("interaction" here means sending commands to the server or asking for a refresh). By default, this feature is enabled for all servers. Using the default settings, the first server refresh is performed after 60 seconds. If there has been no user interaction during this time, then an extra 5 seconds will be added to the refresh period. So the next refresh will be 65 seconds later, and if again there is no user interaction with the server then the next refresh period will be 70 seconds away. This increment will stop being added once the refresh period has reached an hour. All these parameters are configurable from the Server Settings.

Changing the server settings

There are two ways to change the server settings: the global settings and the per-server settings. By default, the per-server settings are linked to the global settings, so changing the global settings affects interactions with all servers. But for each server, the settings can be unlinked and changed individually. The 'chain' button controls the linking with the global settings, and the 'arrow' button resets a value to its default (only available if the parameter is not linked to the global setting).

Global settings: From the main menu, choose Edit | Preferences | Server options	Per-server settings: from the node tree (or table) select a server node, open an Info Panel and go to the Settings tab