Storyboard IO communicates events over a named uni-directional channel. By default, Storyboard applications have a receive channel, named after the deployment bundle file (i.e. [bundlename].gapp). This allows backend applications to send events to the Storyboard Application. A custom receive channel can be specified in the command option for sbengine. The Storyboard application can transmit events on one or more channels. The backend software will need to open the channel and listen for events. See Storyboard IO API for more details.

Storyboard IO integration with the Storyboard Engine is implemented as a plugin. It is possible to create alternate Storyboard IO implementations that take advantage of custom communication facilities available on a platform. Additionally, Storyboard IO has been extended to provide an abstraction of TCP/IP ports in the place of channels.

The Storyboard IO plugin provides a single communication channel that clients can use to inject events into the Storyboard application. These events will be queued and dispatched in the same manner as internally generated events.

Client applications can use Storyboard IO to create their own communication channels and then receive events from that channel from the Storyboard application or from any other Storyboard IO client.