Azure functions send SignalR message during execution (and not at the end)

I am currently using this binding to send messages from my function app to web clients that subscribe to my signalr service.

    {
        "type": "signalR",
        "name": "signalRMessages",
        "hubName": "my_hub",
        "connectionStringSetting": "SignalRConnectionString",
        "direction": "out"
    }

This works as expected but it has the downside that the messages are being sent when the function has finished. I have a new function that is running like 60seconds and i want to report progress to the frontend. Is there any way how to send SignalR-messages from the code? Using the client from @microsoft/signalr to send messages to clients seems not to work or at least i didn't get it to work properly.