Bulletin Manager is a display system for informational bulletins for the Hermes BBS. It offers several options for the display of ANSI or TEXT files to your users. Bulletin Manager works automatically during the user logon process.
The first thing Bulletin Manager does is display 1 of 3 “Tri-Level” bulletins based upon a range of security levels you provide. The Tri-Levels can be used in a number of ways, such as displaying BBS rules, info about different levels of user access, etc.
If you have selected bulletins to be automatically displayed, they will be presented to the caller at this point. Auto–display bulletins from your Master Bulletins menu.
The next thing Bulletin Manager does is handle the “Master Bulletins” menu. It either displays the menu of available bulletins or a prompt asking the user whether they want to view the menu. This option is toggled by you.
After reading the bulletins, or choosing not to, the user continues the normal logon process.
Feature List
1] Display of the “Master Bulletin” menu can be forced or prompted. Menu appears in attractive ANSI display if caller has ANSI turned on.
2] One of three special Tri-Level bulletins may be displayed to the caller. The display is based on Security Level and the ranges are configurable by the SysOp.
3] The display of the Tri-Level bulletin can be either forced or occur once per day.
4] Automatic ANSI or TEXT display of the bulletins.
5] Up to 20 bulletins in the “Master Bulletin” menu. Bulletins can reside anywhere.
6] 5 special ‘sysop’ bulletins for displaying system logs and special files.
7] Remote operation. Bulletin Manager is configurable either logged on locally or by remotely.
Setting Up Bulletin Manager
NOTE! ALL Bulletins MUST END with a CARRIAGE RETURN and NOT CONTAIN extra LINEFEEDS. If you use ANSI Mouse to create ANSI bulletins, you will also needs to use McSink (or a similar utility) to remove the extra linefeed character which ANSI Mouse adds to each line.
NOTE! NOTE! If you want to create and display ANSI bulletins, you will need to make sure that the filenames for these end with “.ansi”. If you are displaying only TEXT bulletins, do not append anything to the end of those filenames.
Put Bulletin Manager and the Bulletin Manager Files folder (and its contents, of course) in the Externals folder and restart Hermes.
Log on to Hermes as User #1 and select Bulletin Manager from the Externals List.
Choose “A> Set Number of Bulletins”
This will control the number of bulletin listings in your “Master Bulletins” menu, up to a maximum of 20.
Choose “B> Set Bulletin Prompts”
All menu items in the “Master Bulletins” menu are configurable by you. Enter the names of the bulletins you will be presenting to your users. Maximum of 50 characters.
Choose “C> Set Bulletin Paths”
Bulletins can reside anywhere, but are limited by a 78 character pathname.
Enter the complete path to your bulletins INCLUDING the FILENAME.
NOTE: All Bulletins are displayed to the caller as either ANSI or TEXT, based upon their settings. When entering pathnames for those bulletins, DO NOT append the “.ansi” or “.text” extensions -- Bulletin Manager will do that. But YOU MUST append “.ansi” to the end of the ANSI version when you save it to disk. Do not append anything to the TEXT version.
Choose “D> Set Sysop Prompts”
Use this area to enter the names of up to 5 special bulletins (system logs, Tabby logs, Generix reports, Report Manager reports, etc.) which you may want to view while online. Maximum of 50 characters.
Choose “E> Set Sysop Paths”
Sysop bulletins can reside anywhere, but are limited by a 78 character pathname. Enter the complete path to your special sysop bulletins.
Choose “F> Set Levels”
Here is where you enter the security level ranges which control the display of the “Tri-Levels” files (these are named ‘Level 1’, ‘Level 2’, and ‘Level 3’ -- ending in ‘.ansi’ for ANSI versions -- and are in a separate folder named “Levels” inside your Bulletin Manager Files folder). There are 2 numbers which you must enter -- a low and a high number. Look at the 3 lines of info on the screen for instructions about how to choose the appropriate SLs.
NOTE: If you do not want to use the “Tri-Levels” feature, simply enter the number 0 in both.
Choose “G> Toggles”
This allows you to control whether the “Master Bulletins” menu is automatically displayed or whether the user will be prompted to see it. It also allows you to set whether or not the “Tri-Levels” will be displayed during each logon or only once per day. You can also set any of the “Regular Bulletins” to automatically display at each logon.
Choose “M> Display Bulletins Menu”
This menu item will be useful for testing your setup.
Problems & Suggestions
Support for all CT Extensions can be found on two locations. The primary support location is Mulligan's Valley, the secondary support location is Olympus. Any problems should be reported to me either on Mulligan's Valley (203) 772-4485 or the Hermes Support BBS (206) 643-2874. You will receive much more attention if you call Mulligan's Valley. Mulligan's Valley also has discussion sections for all the externals, so it might be benificial to call there anyway. You may just learn from someone else's question or suggestion.
