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Queue-it's Akamai Connector v5 uses Akamai EdgeWorkers to integrate an Akamai protected WebServer with Queue-it.

This page is intended to give a high-level technical overview of the Akamai Connector v5. To prevent malicious actors from compromising the security of our customer's high-profile sales and registrations, we host our in-depth Connector documentation in private repositories for versions v4 and up.

If you need more detailed integration documentation than this page offers, connect with one of our technical experts who can understand your use case and determine the optimal setup for your tech stack.

1. Request received
   • User request reaches the Queue-it Connector on your edge infrastructure.
2. Connector evaluation
   • The Queue-it Connector checks:
     • Does the request target a protected path?
     • Does the visitor have a valid Queue-it token?
3. Call to Queue-it for decision logic
   • If the request is protected and no valid token is present, the Connector calls Queue-it to determine if the visitor needs to be queued based on your Queue-it configuration (e.g. traffic levels are above your threshold, rules allowing certain users to bypass the queue, waiting room is active or idle, etc.) 
4. Redirect to Queue-it
   • If the visitor needs to be queued, they are redirected with an HTTP 302 to a waiting room on Queue-it’s infrastructure.
5. Access granted
   • When it’s their turn, they are redirected back to your site with another HTTP 302 and given a signed token. With the signed token, the visitor’s request proceeds to the protected part of your site, and they continue their user journey without queuing.

You can read more about the Connector flow for versions 5 and up on our blog, including user flow diagrams for when users pass without queuing and in cases of service disruptions.

To learn more about how Queue-it works, including waiting room types and when/where Queue-it protects your site, visit Queue-it for developers.

To integrate using the Queue-it Akamai Connector v5, you will need:

• An active Queue-it account
• An active Akamai account
• Queue-it admin available (Someone available with GO Queue-it Platform access and familiarity with GO account configuration settings.)
• Akamai admin available (Someone available with access to the customer Akamai account and familiarity with all existing Akamai environmental configurations like PM rules and variables and EdgeWorkers)
• Akamai v5 Connector Download Access (Akamai admin must have been provisioned with access to secure Queue-it v5 Connector GitHub repository – not available for public access.)
• A non-production Akamai property that can be used for implementing and testing the new Queue-it connector.

The Akamai v5 Connector consists of the following components:

1. Queue-it EdgeWorker – code provided by Queue-it that enables the waiting room protection
2. PM Variables – variables that hold key values used by the EdgeWorker.
3. PM Rules – rules that provide coarse scope definition for the EdgeWorker protection and optionally also assist with integration configuration updates.
4. Queue-it Integration Configuration - configuration information created in the GO Queue-it Platform and propagated to the Akamai environment to be leveraged by the Queue-it EdgeWorker. This configuration information provides finer definition of the protection scope.

Complete these steps in order for best results.

1. Configure waiting rooms, actions, and triggers in Queue-it
2. Create EdgeWorker
3. Add PM variables
4. Create PM rules

Waiting rooms and their protection scope are created and configured in the GO Queue-it Platform and any server-side (KnownUser) configuration information must be propagated to the Akamai environment for real-time access by the Queue-it EdgeWorker. When an integration configuration is saved (published) in the GO Queue-it Platform, the server-side configuration set-tings are packaged into a server-side JSON file and positioned on the Queue-it server, ready for secure downloading. Propagation of these settings (JSON) to the Akamai environment can be completed by one of three methods.

There are two options for configuration settings updating:

1. Manual (inline) - Manually updating integration config within EdgeWorker code
2. Auto-Pull (cache) - Dynamically download and cache integration config

It's recommended to implement these configuration update methods in sequences for best results.

1. Manual method - implement this method first and confirm new PM rules are activating Queue-it EdgeWorker
2. Auto-Pull method – upgrade to this method to eliminate the need to update Akamai when Queue-it integration configuration changes

Queue-it's actions and triggers framework gives you a high degree of flexibility in determining what aspects of your site are covered by the virtual waiting room (see How Queue-it Works).

With the Connector v5, you can also create logic in your EdgeWorker. For instance, you can use PM rules to allow static assets like media files to bypass the Queue-it EdgeWorker for an otherwise-protected website.