In short my question is: Why is a user not added to an engagement plan until the session of a user is timed out?

My setup: I am running Sitecore 8.1.3 and I have created a simple engagement plan, which simply sends a confirmation mail to a user stating that he has subscribed to a newsletter. It consists of 3 elements:

1. Initial state with a timeout of 1 minute
2. Condition which is always evaluated to true
3. Action which sends a campaign (EXM) mail to the user

I add the user to the engagement via a rule action on a goal.

The waiting game: When the user submits to a newsletter I trigger the goal and from the logs, I can see that the user is added to the engagement plan, however I can't see the user in the Engagement Plan supervisor and no mails are send. Only when the session of the user times out (20 minutes after the last page view), the user is added to the engagement plan, which i can verify by looking at the xDB and using the EA supervisor. After I can see that the user is indeed added to the engagement plan, it usually takes 10-20 minutes before the user progresses from the first state with a 1 minute timeout. In total, it takes +40 minutes from a user triggers a goal until my simple engagement plan is processed for the user.

Have I misunderstood something, or are engagement plans not suitable for sending notifications to users immediately? I know that i could simply add an action to the goal that sends an email, but my customer plans to do more elaborate things as part of the sign-up process.

Edit: I know that Sitecore provides a module called "Live session agent", but I am unsure if that would solve my questions, based on the documentation that Sitecore provided (https://dev.sitecore.net/Downloads/Engagement_Automation_Live_Session_Agent.aspx)

In short my question is: Why is a user not added to an engagement plan until the session of a user is timed out?

My setup: I am running Sitecore 8.1.3 and I have created a simple engagement plan, which simply sends a confirmation mail to a user stating that he has subscribed to a newsletter. It consists of 3 elements:

1. Initial state with a timeout of 1 minute
2. Condition which is always evaluated to true
3. Action which sends a campaign (EXM) mail to the user

I add the user to the engagement via a rule action on a goal.

The waiting game: When the user submits to a newsletter I trigger the goal and from the logs, I can see that the user is added to the engagement plan, however I can't see the user in the Engagement Plan supervisor and no mails are send. Only when the session of the user times out (20 minutes after the last page view), the user is added to the engagement plan, which i can verify by looking at the xDB and using the EA supervisor. Only after I can see that the user is indeed added to the engagement plan, he is process through the plan.

Have I misunderstood something, or are engagement plans not suitable for sending notifications to users immediately? I know that i could simply add an action to the goal that sends an email, but my customer plans to do more elaborate things as part of the sign-up process.

Edit: I know that Sitecore provides a module called "Live session agent", but I am unsure if that would solve my questions, based on the documentation that Sitecore provided (https://dev.sitecore.net/Downloads/Engagement_Automation_Live_Session_Agent.aspx)

In short my question is: Why is a user not added to an engagement plan until the session of a user is timed out?

My setup: I am running Sitecore 8.1.3 and I have created a simple engagement plan, which simply sends a confirmation mail to a user stating that he has subscribed to a newsletter. It consists of 3 elements:

1. Initial state with a timeout of 1 minute
2. Condition which is always evaluated to true
3. Action which sends a campaign (EXM) mail to the user

I add the user to the engagement via a rule action on a goal.

The waiting game: When the user submits to a newsletter I trigger the goal and from the logs, I can see that the user is added to the engagement plan, however I can't see the user in the Engagement Plan supervisor and no mails are send. Only when the session of the user times out (20 minutes after the last page view), the user is added to the engagement plan, which i can verify by looking at the xDB and using the EA supervisor. After I can see that the user is indeed added to the engagement plan, it usually takes 10-20 minutes before the user progresses from the first state with a 1 minute timeout. In total, it takes +40 minutes from a user triggers a goal until my simple engagement plan is processed for the user.

Have I misunderstood something, or are engagement plans not suitable for sending notifications to users immediately? I know that i could simply add an action to the goal that sends an email, but my customer plans to do more elaborate things as part of the sign-up process.

In short my question is: Why is a user not added to an engagement plan until the session of a user is timed out?

My setup: I am running Sitecore 8.1.3 and I have created a simple engagement plan, which simply sends a confirmation mail to a user stating that he has subscribed to a newsletter. It consists of 3 elements:

1. Initial state with a timeout of 1 minute
2. Condition which is always evaluated to true
3. Action which sends a campaign (EXM) mail to the user

I add the user to the engagement via a rule action on a goal.

The waiting game: When the user submits to a newsletter I trigger the goal and from the logs, I can see that the user is added to the engagement plan, however I can't see the user in the Engagement Plan supervisor and no mails are send. Only when the session of the user times out (20 minutes after the last page view), the user is added to the engagement plan, which i can verify by looking at the xDB and using the EA supervisor. After I can see that the user is indeed added to the engagement plan, it usually takes 10-20 minutes before the user progresses from the first state with a 1 minute timeout. In total, it takes +40 minutes from a user triggers a goal until my simple engagement plan is processed for the user.

Have I misunderstood something, or are engagement plans not suitable for sending notifications to users immediately? I know that i could simply add an action to the goal that sends an email, but my customer plans to do more elaborate things as part of the sign-up process.

Edit: I know that Sitecore provides a module called "Live session agent", but I am unsure if that would solve my questions, based on the documentation that Sitecore provided (https://dev.sitecore.net/Downloads/Engagement_Automation_Live_Session_Agent.aspx)