CANS is a notification system for online communities that is designed around the importance of a user’s social context and personal notification preferences. CANS was built with a focus on why, when, and where users receive awareness information and how that information can be used to derive meaning from the activity occurring in the collaborative community.

The CANS Server is the core component of the entire CANS system (event producers, event consumers, notification server). It is the server-behind-the-scenes that records, analyzes, and dispenses all the activity awareness information. The CANS Server is capable of receiving event information from Event Producers and delivering notifications to Event Consumers (see image below).