a4j:poll is one of the way how you can organize the periodical polling of server data and updating the page. a4j:poll is a standard RichFaces Ajax component. Thus, you can use the same approach as for a4j:commandButton for example. I.e. you can use action attribute to invoke the action method and reRender attribute to update area(s) on the client when Ajax Response returns back. RichFaces uses the standard form based request, so the form around the a4j:poll component is required.

The following example shows how the date and time is updated on the page based on the data taken from the server. To turn off polling, press "Stop Polling" button.

NOTE:polling is automatically disabled in this demo after one minute of working.