AUTO-MIGHT PROFESSIONAL V2.0 Developed by The Pendulum Group, Inc. One-Event Demonstration Version USER'S MANUAL Developed by: The Pendulum Group, Inc. 333 W. Hampden Avenue #1015 Englewood, Colorado 80110 Voice: (303) 781-0575 FAX: (303) 781-0562 Copyright 1993 - The Pendulum Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Auto-Might Professional is a trademark of The Pendulum Group, Inc. INTRODUCTION Welcome to the world of unattended operation of your computer. Auto-Might Professional is a powerful program that you can learn to use in only a few minutes to automatically execute any program or utility. Auto-Might Professional is a combination of two memory resident programs, an event processor and a keyboard macro builder. This means it can run programs and utilities for you as if you yourself were sitting at the keyboard of your computer typing the commands. To process an event, Auto-Might Professional needs to know three things: 1. The keystrokes that run the program or utility. 2. What time of day or on what date the event should be processed. 3. How frequently the event should be processed. (One Time, Daily, Weekly, or Monthly). Thus Auto-Might Professional gives you the ability to execute programs and utilities just once or on a regular basis when the computer is unattended, at night, or on holidays. This demo version of Auto-Might Professional allows only one event to be scheduled. HOW DOES AUTO-MIGHT PROFESSIONAL WORK? Auto-Might Professional is a memory-resident program, which means it stays in your computer's memory regardless of what other programs you may run. Auto-Might Professional is usually loaded when the system is booted, at which time it reads an Auto-Might Professional file containing your events. AutoMight Professional continually monitors its own internal clock and calendar, comparing that to the events scheduled. When the time comes for an event to be processed, Auto-Might Professional will attempt to process it. Note that an Auto-Might Professional event can feed keystrokes to a program already running, but normally an Auto-Might Professional event starts a program at the DOS prompt. If scheduled, Auto-Might Professional cannot start a second program. Auto-Might Professional was designed to be fully compatible with other memory-resident programs. Before executing an event, a warning window will appear on the screen. The window displays the name of the event and the event's number. If no one responds by pressing one of the three function keys, Auto-Might Professional will beep once each minute for five minutes. After five minutes, AutoMight Professional assumes the machine is idle and processes the event. If you press the F1 key, Auto-Might Professional will immediately process the event. If you press the F2 key, the warning window will disappear, and Auto-Might Professional will "snooze" for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, the warning window will reappear. If you press the F3 key, Auto-Might Professional will cancel execution of the scheduled event for this time only. That is, if it is a recurring event scheduled to be processed each Wednesday, it will still be processed next Wednesday. USING THIS MANUAL In this manual, the key that we call may be called "return" in other publications. We call it because when typing command strings in Auto-Might Professional, you specify this key as . SOFTWARE INSTALLATION 1. Install this Demo following the instructions on the diskette and those that appear during the installation process. Note: The spelling of the Auto-Might Professional program is abbreviated as "automite". DOS does not allow names longer than 8 characters. 2. Now add a command to the DOS file autoexec.bat that will load the Auto-Might Professional program into memory each time the system is booted. Add the following lines to the autoexec.bat file: cd\automite automite cd\ Note: These lines must not precede any commands in the autoexec.bat file that set the date and time of the computer. Do not change the computer's date or time with the DOS date and time commands after Auto-Might Professional has been loaded. Otherwise, Auto-Might Professional's calendar and clock will not be synchronized with the computer's clock and calendar. At some point while the system is booting, you should see the message on your screen: Auto-Might Professional Event Processor Successfully Installed This message tells you that Auto-Might Professional is now resident in your computer's memory, it has read the event file, and is ready to execute the event found there. GETTING STARTED WITH THIS DEMO To start the program, you must have installed the Auto-Might Demo as previously described. Auto-Might Professional must be resident in memory to process an event. Once installed, the following menu screen will appear: Auto-Might Demo Manual F1 Ordering Information F2 Auto-Key Highlights F3 Why You Need Auto-Might Professional F4 Testimonials F5 _________________________________________________ Exit to Auto-Might's One Event Alt-X You may highlight the field you want or hit the appropriate Function Key. The F1 - F5 Keys are all text files which can be printed and reviewed. We highly recommend that the Auto-Might Demo Manual be printed so that you can understand the basic workings of the software. Additionally, the Keystroke Table is very important to the setting up of your one event. NOTE: To print any of the text files in this manual, use the DOS copy command. As an example, to print the manual for this demo type: COPY MANUAL.TXT PRN If after exiting this Demo you wish to return at a later time, the following procedure should be followed; Begin in the directory that contains the Auto-Might Demo, usually called "automite". This Demo allows you to enter two commands at the prompt of the "automite" directory. These commands are "menu" and "autoedit". Typing in: menu , brings up the menu shown above. Typing in: autoedit , brings up Auto-Might's One Event. To bring up the Auto-Might Professional event scheduling screen, called autoedit, enter autoedit The event scheduling screen is simple to use, but does require that you enter the command string precisely. We suggest you test an event command string yourself before entering it into Auto-Might Professional to be certain that it will do what you intended. Since it is critical that Auto-Might Professional have the exact key sequence needed to execute the event, you may want to write down each keystroke as you test it. FUNCTION KEYS Several function key descriptions appear across the bottom of the Auto-Might Professional event scheduling screen, which are described below. In addition, several other keys can be used on this screen; they are also described below. F1 - PREVIOUS EVENT Auto-Might Professional Version 2.0 has an 8 and 32 event version; this function key scrolls the event display one event closer to event number 1. F2 - NEXT EVENT Auto-Might Professional Version 2.0 has an 8 and 32 event version; this function key scrolls the event display one event closer to the last numbered event, either 8 or 32. F3 - SAVE This function key saves to disk any changes made to any event. F5 - COPY Auto-Might Professional Version 2.0 has an 8 and 32 event version; this function key allows you to copy previously defined events. F4 - CANCEL This function key erases all information for the event currently displayed. F10 - QUIT This function key terminates the current editing session, and returns you to the DOS prompt. ENTER (or RETURN) This key moves the cursor to the next field on the screen. UP ARROW This key moves the cursor up through the fields on the screen. DOWN ARROW This key moves the cursor down through the fields on the screen. Other Editing Keys like the insert, delete, and destructive backspace keys can also be used when editing events. EASY EVENTS Auto-Might Professional's keyboard macro AutoKey can "record" the keystrokes necessary to execute an event, and assign a key combination to that recording. Auto-Might Professional will enter the key combination at the time you specify causing the macro program to replay the pre- recorded keystrokes. When programming an event, simply enter the key combination in the Keystrokes field of the Auto-Might Professional event scheduling screen. See the Keystroke Table for a list of key combinations supported by Auto-Might Professional. We are unable to provide the macro capability of AutoKey in this demo. We are assuming you have knowledge of the use of macros. For more information about AutoKey, go to the AutoMight Demo Menu and press the function key F3. EXAMPLE 1: DOS DIRECTORY Demo Event #1 instructs Auto-Might Professional to execute a "dir" command, which will display a directory on the screen. Press twice to skip the date and time. We will come back to these fields later. REPEAT FREQUENCY Type D at the Repeats prompt so the event will occur daily. Auto-Might Professional will display a "Y" under each normal workday, Monday through Friday. So far you have told AutoMight Professional that you want this event to occur every workday of each week. We want to execute this event today. Press until the cursor is at the Title field. EVENT NUMBER, TITLE AND KEYSTROKES Auto-Might Professional will automatically number this event as number "1". Now, in the Title field enter: DOS Directory as the title of this event. You can enter up to 20 characters for a title. Press enter to move to the Keystrokes field. In the Keystrokes field, type the following keystrokes: dir You can enter up to 512 keystrokes. Note that tells Auto-Might Professional to simulate pressing the enter key after feeding the keystrokes "dir" into the system. Press to move to the Date field. DATE, TIME AND DAY The fields in the upper left of the screen are for the date, time, repeats, and day of the week. Type: 01 01 1993 in the Date field. Since this is a daily event, the starting date is not important as long as it is some date and/or time in the past. You must use a date and/or time in the future for a one-time event; however, you can use a date in the future for the first occurrence of any event regardless of the frequency, daily, weekly, or monthly. Press to move to the Time field. Look at the current date and time display in the upper right section of the screen, and enter a time in the Time field that is one or two minutes from now. Enter it in 12-hour time, and specify a.m. or p.m. Note: When entering times, 12:00 am is midnight and 12:00 pm is noon. To enter a time such as half past midnight, you would enter 12:30 am. SAVE THE EVENT Press the F3 function key to save the new event and tell the Auto-Might Professional event processor about the new event. Press F10 to quit the editor and return to DOS. Now wait for the warning window to be displayed. When the warning window "pops up", press F1 to tell Auto-Might Professional it is OK to run the event. AutoMight Professional will simulate typing the commands for a DOS directory; the directory list will appear on your screen. EXAMPLE 2: COLD OR WARM BOOT THE COMPUTER You can include an Auto-Might Professional code in an event that will cold boot, or warm boot your computer, and . A cold boot completely resets your system, as though you turned the power switch off and then on again. A warm boot has the same effect as pressing the keys ctrl-alt-del simultaneously. The only keystrokes in this event are the Event Processor's code for cold or warm booting the computer or . It is not necessary to include the code for enter command. We recommend only or be entered in the event. No other keystrokes should precede or follow this code. CAUTION: Programs that are running when Auto-Might Professional processes a boot code may not have saved data to disk or closed any files in use, so data loss is possible. Please be careful! We strongly suggest this function not be used in any event when the /w option (disable warning window) was specified at the time Auto-Might Professional was loaded. We also suggest the event title warn that the event re-boots the system. OPTIONS AND FUNCTIONS This section describes Auto-Might Professional's DOS command line options and the functions available within Auto-Might Professional. The command line options provide quick installation or un-installation of Auto-Might Professional, allow you to run Auto-Might Professional without the pop up window being displayed, and allow you to reset the cursor when necessary. Auto-Might Professional Functions allow you to delay some portion of an event (wait codes), print a hardcopy of the screen during or after an event, or define an event that cold or warm boots the system. COMMAND LINE OPTIONS Auto-Might Professional offers several DOS command line options for use with the event processor (automite.com). /u Un-install Un-install removes Auto-Might Professional from memory (it is the opposite of entering "automite"). /w Disable Warning Window This option disables the warning window. When automite is run with this option, Auto-Might Professional will not display the warning window prior to processing any event. Events run immediately. You are not warned that an event is about to begin. The event cannot be snoozed or cancelled. WAIT CODES You can insert a code between groups of keystrokes in an event that tells Auto-Might Professional to wait the specified number of seconds or minutes before processing the remaining keystrokes in the event. This is called a Wait Code. Delays can be from 1 second to 999 minutes and you can put as many wait codes in a single event as you wish. Auto-Might Professional has two wait codes, for minutes or for seconds where nnn is a number between 1 and 999. Wait codes can be used in any combination to achieve the desired delay. PRINT SCREEN CODE You can include an Auto-Might Professional code in an event that will print a hardcopy of the screen at that moment. Auto-Might Professional simulates your pressing the shift-prtsc keys. NOTE: You may want to insert a wait code of a few seconds in front of the function, to allow time for the event to display the desired information on the screen. TIPS, HINTS AND TRICKS We have included a few tips, hints, and tricks from current Auto-Might Professional users and from our staff. If you have suggestions, please write or call. MAKING SURE EVENTS RUN EXACTLY WHEN YOU WANT THEM TO Remember, Auto-Might Professional displays the warning window for five minutes before processing the event when the computer is unattended. For example, if you want your event to run unattended at midnight, schedule it for 11:55 p.m. RUNNING COMMUNICATIONS SESSIONS If your communications software has a command, script, or batch file processing capability, we recommend you use that software to perform the step-by-step procedures within the communications session. Use Auto-Might Professional to start the communications software and run that script or batch file. BUILDING EVENTS SLOWLY BUT SURELY Build your event file by adding one keystroke at a time and testing it up to that point. If a step that was supposed to happen instead fails, insert a wait code at that point, and continue adding one keystroke at a time, or one wait code and one keystroke at a time, until the event is complete. If after a wait code keystrokes still disappear, try a longer wait period. Use "Auto-Key" wherever applicable. TESTING COMPLICATED EVENTS Divide complicated events into segments. Build and test each segment as suggested above. After all segments work as desired, combine them into a single event, or use "AutoKey" and "Record" the appropriate keystrokes. DISABLING AN EVENT To disable an event without erasing it from the event file simply enter in all zeros for the starting date. TECHNICAL INFORMATION - SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS COMPUTER HARDWARE Auto-Might Professional operates on IBM PS/2, PC, XT, AT, SX and compatible computers. MEMORY REQUIREMENTS Once installed, Auto-Might Professional uses less than 8K of memory. The event editor, autoedit, requires approximately 40K of memory when active. OPERATING SYSTEM Disk operating systems PC-DOS or MS-DOS versions 2.1 or above. The program does not work in Windows, Desqview, or with Emulation packages. KEYSTROKE TABLE Auto-Might Professional also recognizes numerous key combinations. The following table lists the special key combinations supported by Auto-Might Professional. Note: NUM key combinations refer to the keys and characters on the numeric keypad, as opposed to those on the typewriter portion of your keyboard. SUPPORTED KEY COMBINATIONS