Page 1 ΥΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΈ ³ NewUser ³ ΓΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔ΄ ³ A PCBoard NewUser AutoMessage Utility ³ ΓΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔΔ΄ ³ Version 1.0 08/27/92 Copyright (c) 1992 ³ ΤΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΝΎ WHAT IS NEWUSER ? ----------------- With the multitude of PCBoard utilities available, I was surprised that I had never seen a simple utility which would automatically (in your EVENT) send new users of the BBS a personalized message from the SYSOP welcoming them to the BBS. As I am sure a lot of sysops would possibly like this capability, and being that I am not aware of any existing similar program, I decided to sit down and write a small program which would leave welcome messages. A short while later NEWUSER was created. NewUser is a nice little program which will read your ANSWERx file, extract your newusers and allow you to send them a personal message on the BBS welcoming them to the board, informing them of rules, etc. NEWUSER is not quite a stand-alone program. It requires the use of a companion shareware program called TXT2MSG. TXT2MSG is written and copyrighted by Robert Vostreys and is widely available on most BBS's which have a sysop file section or directly from Robert on his BBS (The FTL BBS). NewUser reads your ANSWERx file, and based on the information you provide in the configuration file, generates a DOS batch file which invokes TXT2MSG with the appropriate parameters to insert new messages into your PCBoard Message Base. CAPABILITIES and LIMITATIONS ---------------------------- NEWUSER can process over 1200 new users at a time. It can be called as often as needed in a single nightly event and process as many different ANSWERx scripts as you need while generating only one calling batch file for TXT2MSG to use. If you have a user who answers a questionnaire more than one time, NEWUSER will only generate one message for that person. DISTRIBUTION FILES ----------------- Included in your ZIP file should at least be the following programs. If these files are not in the copy of the ZIP you have, then call Xignals PCBoard and download a complete copy. NEWUSER.EXE <-------- NewUser Executable Program NEWUSER.DOC <-------- This Documentation NEWUSER.CFG <-------- Sample Configuration File WELCOME.TXT <-------- Sample Welcome Message SAMPLE.BAT <-------- Sample "Event" Batch File FILE_ID.DIZ <-------- PCBoard upload description file README.TXT <-------- Information on Cost etc... OPERATION Page 2 --------- The General syntax for running NEWUSER is: NEWUSER ex: NEWUSER NEWUSER.CFG would be the configuration file you create. NOTE: If you want to process multiple questionnaires, you will need to have a unique config file for each questionnaire and invoke NEWUSER once for each ANSWERx file. If you do not specify a config file on the command line, NEWUSER will try to use the default config file "NEWUSER.CFG" in the same directory from which NEWUSER was called. If you forget the syntax, then you can get a brief description of the command line syntax by typing: NEWUSER /? or: NEWUSER -? or: NEWUSER Help. Anything other than the config file or the help requestor will cause the program to abort. If NEWUSER cannot find the .CFG file or the ANSWERx file, it will abort and print a short message to a file called ERROR.RPT in the default directory. If the file ANSWERx is locked by another node on a network, NEWUSER will exit and write an error message to the ERROR.RPT file. As stated before, NEWUSER will generate a batch file which will call the shareware program TXT2MSG. TXT2MSG is a neat little program in itself and offers some other interesting capabilities on it's own. For our purposes, all you will need to do with TXT2MSG is copy the file TXT2MSG to a directory in your dos path or to the directory from which you will run NEWUSER, or fully qualify the location of the TXT2MSG program in your configuration file. There is no requirement that you do anything else with TXT2MSG, other than it being accessible to NEWUSER. EVENT PROCESSING Page 3 ---------------- A sample batch file (SAMPLE.BAT) is included with NEWUSER. It looks something like this: D: <------ (LINE 1 ) CD\PCB\MAIN <------ (LINE 2 ) TYPE ANSWER1 >> ANSWER1.HST <------ (LINE 3 ) IF EXIST MAIL.BAT DEL MAIL.BAT <------ (LINE 4 ) IF EXIST ANSWER1. NEWUSER NEWUSER.CFG <------ (LINE 5 ) IF EXIST MAIL.BAT CALL MAIL.BAT <------ (LINE 6 ) IF NOT EXIST MAIL.BAT GOTO LATER <------ (LINE 7 ) DEL ANSWER1 <------ (LINE 8 ) :LATER <------ (LINE 9 ) CD\PCB <------ (LINE 10) BOARD <------ (LINE 11) That's it! ....... If you have already got an EVENT.SYS file with nightly processing in it, then all you have to do is modify your existing EVENT.SYS file to include the above (modified of course to match your system. LINE 01 - Places you on the proper drive (trivial, but safer) LINE 02 - Changes to the dir where your ANSWERx files are stored. LINE 03 - Appends your "DAILY" ANSWERx file to a retention history copy. NOTE: You must use >> to append using the type command. If you use > (a single > sign) you will overwrite the existing ANSWER1.HST file. LINE 04 - Removes any lingering MAIL.BAT file from previous runs. LINE 05 - Checks to see if you have an ANSWERx file and if so executes NEWUSER with a config file of NEWUSER.CFG LINE 06 - Checks to see if you have a successfully created MAIL.BAT file and if so, CALLS the MAIL.BAT file. NOTE: If you are using a DOS version prior to 3.3, the CALL statement probably will not work. You will have to replace CALL with something like COMMAND /C . Check your DOS manual for the correct syntax if needed. LINE 07 - If MAIL.BAT doesn't exist for some reason or another, it skips the next line which deletes the ANSWERx file. This way you can run again the next night after you figure out why there was a problem the first time. LINE 08 - Deletes the ANSWERx file so that tomorrow you will have a new ANSWER copy with only new callers in it. (Avoids duplicity). LINE 09 - This is just a label for line # 7. LINE 10 - Changes back to the default PCB directory (trivial, but safer) LINE 11 - Restarts PCBoard .......... Betch'ya knew that one huh! Obviously, this is only an example, you can get more technical or simple as you see fit. I think that a sample batch file like this shows how the process works better than wordy documentation does ............. The key thing to remember is that NEWUSER only creates an output batch file. That batch file is appended to if it already exist. How you decide to process, and in what order up to you. The above is only an example. CONFIGURATION FILE Page 4 ------------------ D:\PCB\MAIN\ANSWER1 <------ (LINE 1 ) D:\PCB\MAIN\MAIL.BAT <------ (LINE 2 ) D:\PCB\MAIN\MSGS <------ (LINE 3 ) D:\PCB\MAIN\WELCOME.TXT <------ (LINE 4 ) WELCOME NEW USER <------ (LINE 5 ) MILES LESTER <------ (LINE 6 ) NO <------ (LINE 7 ) The CONFIGURATION File is REQUIRED! NEWUSER will NOT work without it. The file must contain all seven lines with valid values on each line and they must be in the order presented above. LINE 01 - Name and Location of your ANSWERx file LINE 02 - Name and Location of the MAIL batch file to be created LINE 03 - Name and Location of PCBoard Message Base which messages are to be added. This can be any valid message base from the main board to any conference you chose. LINE 04 - Name and Location of the Message text you wish to be sent to the user. You can include PCBoard @ macros imbedded in the message (such as @FIRST@) to personalize the feel of the message. This is a straight text file. LINE 05 - This is the text you wish to be the SUBJECT: of the message. This field is limited to 25 characters. LINE 06 - This represents who the message will be FROM: You could put your name, "SYSOP", or "WELCOME WAGON" or whomever you want the message to be from. This field is limited to 25 characters. LINE 07 - This field is the indicator for whether or not the message will be PRIVATE (receiver only) mail. Valid Values: YES or Y (For PRIVATE R/O) NO or N (For Public) OUTPUT FILES ------------ MAIL.BAT (Or whatever file you specified on line 2 of the .cfg file). NEWUSER will normally only generate the MAIL.BAT file which you specified in the configuration program. The file MAIL.BAT is created if it doesn't already exist, and appended to if it already exists. The append feature is what allows you to create multiple config files and process each config file, but only creating one MAIL.BAT file. This would allow you to process the NEWUSER Script Questionnaire, perhaps a visiting Sysop's questionnaire, and maybe an Adult Application questionnaire all in the same event. You could send totally different messages in totally different conferences to each group of users. The only other file NEWUSER will create is the file called ERROR.RPT. This file is only created if you have an error while trying to access one or more of the files. DISCLAIMER (you knew! this was coming ...) Page 5 __________________________________________ MilesWare hereby disclaims all warranties relating to this product, whether express or implied, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. MilesWare cannot and will not be liable for any special, incidental, consequential, indirect or similar damages due to loss of data or any other reason, even if MilesWare or an authorized MilesWare agent has been advised of the possibility of such damages. In no event shall the liability for any damages ever exceed the price paid for the license to use software, regardless of the form and/or extent of the claim. The user of this program bears all risk as to the quality and performance of the software. COPYRIGHT AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ------------------------------ NEWUSER is not public domain. It is copyrighted software. Copyright (c) 1992 MilesWare, All Rights Reserved. TXT2MSG is Copyright (c) 1988, 90, 91 Robert Vostreys I would like to thank Robert for creating TXT2MSG. Great little tool to aid a sysop in lots of useful ways. I would also like to thank Richard Pope and Floyd Vest for assisting me with the more difficult programming routines. It's absolutely frightening how similar Amiga Basic is to QuickBasic. Thanks guys. NEWUSER is written completely in Microsoft QuickBasic 4.5 SUPPORT AND UPDATES ------------------- The Latest copy of NEWUSER (and other PCBoard utils by MilesWare) can by always be found on: XIGNALS PCBoard (205) 821-4664 14.4 USR HST/DUAL Miles Lester (Author and Sysop) Auburn, Alabama TXT2MSG, if not available where you got NEWUSER from, can be downloaded from: FASTER-THAN-LIGHT BBS (404) 292-8761 Robert Vostreys (Sysop) Atlanta, Ga. If you have problems or suggestions or just want to say thanks for a simple but useful utility, then you can reach me via the following methods. SALT AIR BBS Home of PCBoard --- I call at least weekly ILink In the Ilink sysop's conference InterNet mlester@ducvax.auburn.edu BitNet mlester@auducvax.bitnet Xignals PCBoard number is posted above etc.. U.S. Postal Service Miles Lester 1001 E. Samford Ave. Auburn, AL 36830