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Message Alert v1.02 What is Message Alert? ---------------------- Message Alert (MA) is a message base utility program that tells you when any messages containing key phrases are received on your system. MA alerts you to these messages by creating its own message in your netmail message area. The easiest way to explain MA is to present an example. Let's say you are running FrontDoor in a private network that exchanges 14 echo areas in addition to Netmail. You don't need to read all of the messages every day yet you do have to at least scan every folder (message area) daily looking for certain key messages of interest. This is where MA comes in. You can set up MA to watch specific folders (or ALL folders) for any incoming messages that contain key phrases. You further tell MA where in the messages to search for each search phrase. You could set up one search phrase in NetMail to search for any message where the sender's name contains the phrase "McDaniel." You could set up a search with a phrase of "modems" and have MA search only the subject lines of messages in the folder FD_DEV. Simply put, MA alerts you to any incoming messages from a person, to a person, about a subject, or containing a phrase in the body of the text. MA and FrontDoor ---------------- In order for MA to work, you must be using FrontDoor and MUST have all of your message folders set up as Folders in FDSETUP. If you are running FrontDoor and a bulletin board system using the Hudson style message format, you must still have every message area set up as a folder in FOLDER.FD. MA requires that you are running FrontDoor and that your FD config file be in the 2.02 format. In other words, your FD configuration file must be named SETUP.FD. Older versions of FD called the cfg file FD.SYS and it is safe to copy FD.SYS as SETUP.FD in the FD directory. MA will NOT run properly if you are not using FrontDoor or if the SETUP.FD file is not found. You do not have to run MA from the FD directory; however, you must run MA from the directory where the MA.EXE file is located. MA and Message Bases Formats ---------------------------- MA currently works on two types of message bases: 1) The Opus/FD style using .MSG files. 2) The Hudson format used by QuickBBS and support by certain versions of TosScan/FD. -) There are plans to support the TPBoard message base as well. The Opus format requires no additional setup when using MA. The Hudson message format does require special instruction. If you are using the Hudson format with TosScan (no bulletin board), you must establish a User named "MA MA" in FDSetup (without the quotes). Users are edited under the menu option GLOBAL. If you are using the Hudson format with a bulletin board, you must add a user to your USERS.BBS file. The earlier in your USERS file that you add "MA MA," the faster will be MA's search for that record. This provides MA with access to the LastRead record used by MA to record scanned messages. Setting up MA ------------- MA requires very little configuration. Run MA from the DOS prompt and you will see a pull-down menu with the following main-bar options: Configs Scan Locks Exit Move the highlight bar to Configs and press [Enter]. You now have two choices: Searches and Options; select Options. The settings you see are the only settings required for MA other than the message Search criteria records. For full help on what these settings do, move the highlight bar to any setting and press [F1]. But briefly: Editor: When you run a scan of messages from the pull-down menu, a file is created with a report of the results. To view this file, MA calls the editor you specify here. Color: A Yes or No setting to turn color on/off in MA. Lock: When messages are found that match a search record, you have the option of "locking" to prevent them from being deleted. Make very sure that you aren't running any other utilities that will have problems with locked .MSG files. Style: Which style of message base are you using. If you select Hudson and don't have the necessary support files available, you won't be able to reenter MA without deleting the MA.CFG file. Users: If you are running a Hudson format message base with a bulletin board, this sets the DOS path to your Users.bbs file. To save these settings after editing, select the SAVE option from the Exit menu. Search records -------------- These records specify the criteria for MA's scans through the message base. A search record consists of: - a phrase to search for - instructions on which part of the message to search - the folder in which to search - instructions on deleting matching records - any special instructions according to the type of search To edit/create search records, select SEARCH from the Configs menu. The screen you will see appears something like: Folder: _____________ Phrase: _____________ Search: _____________ Flags: _____________ Delete: _____________ Initially, the Folder selected will be the first folder in your FOLDER file. If you have created any search records for this folder, you will see the data for the first search record for that folder. If the phrase is blank (empty), there are NO search records for this folder and you are looking at a new search record which will only be saved when or if completed. Try pressing [ENTER] while the highlight bar is on FOLDER; you will see a list of all the available folders. By selecting any of them, you will change to the list of search records for the selected folder. Once you select a folder, all operations such as adding and deleting are for THAT folder until you select a different folder. SEARCH tells MA which part of the message you wish to scan. The options are: 1) The text of the message 2) The subject line of the message 3) The names of the message (both FROM and TO) If you want to watch for the same phrase in both the subject and text of the message, you will need to create two search records for that folder with each having the same search phrase. PHRASE is the phrase you wish to have MA watch for. There are several considerations depending on which SEARCH type you select. If you are searching in either the text of the message or the subject line, the message will be considered a "match" and you will be alerted to that message *IF* the phrase you enter is present ANYWHERE within the subject (or text) or the message. The search is case insensitive. When searching in the subject line or message text, you can further specify TWO search phrases which MUST appear together in the same message subject line (or together in the message text) to be considered a matching message. To enter two search phrases in the same search record, separate them with two forward slash letters. Example: colour//red as a text search would look for COLOUR and RED together in a message. If you are searching the NAME fields of a message, you have three additional commands to use. 1) If you enter a phrase that begins with an exclamation point, MA will search for any names that BEGIN with the following text. For example: !MI would consider matching any names beginning with MI. 2) If you enter a phrase that begins with an @ mark, MA will search for any names that contains the following text. For example: @MI would consider matching any names that contain MI 3) If you don't use any of the above two command, MA will expect an exact match. If you enter "John Henry", MA will only consider a match the full name "John Henry". FLAGS. Currently, only the name SEARCH types support any additional flags. When searching the name fields, you must tell MA which name field to search: the FROM name, the TO name, or BOTH names. DELETE. When searching the name fields, you have the additional option of deleting any matching messages. This option only works in the OPUS style message base. You would use this option when you absolutely didn't want any messages entering your system from a particular source (person). Adding records -------------- Search records are added by pressing [INS]. You will see a new record appear with a blank phrase field. You can add as many records as you wish; however, only complete records are saved on exiting MA. Deleting records ---------------- Search records are deleted by pressing [DEL]. If the record phrase is blank and there are no records remaining for the current folder, there is no harming is pressing the [DEL] key. SCANNING -------- The process of having MA search through new messages is called a "scan." If you have added new search records and want MA to look through messages it has already looked through, that is called a "rescan." Both of these are options from the SCAN selection on the main menu bar. You can scan or rescan from the menu but MA was really intended to run from a batch file following new incoming mail. In this way, MA performs the searching whenever mail arrives without your instruction every time. To run a scan without entering MA, type MA at the DOS prompt followed by any mix of the following options: /? = displays this help list /S = instructions to perform a scan /M = instructions to output a netmail message report /F = forces a rescan of previously scanned messages /L = turns off locking regardless of MA's settings /Q = runs MA in quick mode /S Scan This option is required to initiate a scan from the DOS prompt. Without this option, MA will load in full screen mode regardless of any other option (other than /?). /M MESSAGE This tells MA to produce a .MSG file in your netmail area with a report on the findings of this scan. If you don't use /M, you will have to check for the report file MASCAN.OUT. /F FORCE RESCAN Use with -- not to replace -- the /S option, this tells MA to extend the scan to already scanned messages. MA knows which messages have been scanned by either the lastread counters (in the Hudson format) or a flag set in the message itself (OPUS style base). /L LOCK Override Overrides the internal "lock" settings and disables message locking. /Q Quickmode Normally, MA scans by folder and takes the search records in sequence. This means that for EACH search record, ALL messages must be read in. This is done to produce a report like the following: SYS18 ----- COSTS Text search Msg# 1 JAMES SMITH ANTHONY LISA ET AL Msg# 10 JAMES SMITH JOHN NELSON TEST Text search Msg# 2 JAMES SMITH NO ONE COLOUR//RED Text search Msg# 1 John Brown GRAPHICS Note that all findings (see the COSTS text search) for a particular search are grouped together. To do this, the same messages had to be read for scan for each of the subsequent searches. QUICK mode changes that to open each message once and then for that message, run through all the searches: SYS18 ----- MSG# 1 COSTS Text search JAMES SMITH ANTHONY LISA ET AL MSG# 10 COSTS Text search JAMES SMITH JOHN NELSON MSG# 2 TEST Text search John Brown Graphics This saves a marginal amount of time because MA only opens each message once. The savings are about 20-25% but the primary factor is the difference in the format of the reports. Do you want all matches for a message to be grouped together? Or would your prefer all findings for a search to list the matched messages? Locking/Unlocking ----------------- Message locking and unlocking is only performed on the OPUS .MSG style message base. If you are running a bulletin board that imports from the OPUS format, you should ensure that you importer can import READ-ONLY message files before enabling locking.