DataEnter, Michael Kocum Taborstrasse 27/23 A-1020 Vienna AUSTRIA CIS: 70143,1667 MHS: MICHAEL @ DEMK (via CSERVE) Internet: michael@demk.co.at Fax: +43/1/2143829 Introduction to MailRed ------------------------ MailRed redirects messages from a mailbox to another address and/or sends absent notifications (out-of-office messages). MailRed preserves the sender's address and is fully message driven. Once installed users can start and stop redirection by simply sending messages with commands to MailRed. Also included is a Windows Client (MRClient.EXE) which is a simple point and click interface to MailRed. MailRed is avilable in English, German and French for DOS, OS/2, Windows 95 and Windows NT. Some suggestions as to what you can do: - Send an absent notification so that everyone knows you are out of office - Redirect mail from the Admin mailbox to a real user - Redirect mail for an out-of-office user to another person - Redirect mail from a virtual mailbox like "Sales" or "Support" to a real person - Redirect mail for a user to his/her Compuserve account (Gateway required) - Redirect mail for a user to the Internet (Gateway required) - Redirect mail for a user to a fax machine (FAX Gateway required) System Requirements ------------------- DOS version : DOS 3.3 Win32 version : Windows NT 3.1 or Windows 95 OS/2 version : OS/2 2.x Microsoft Mail, version 3.2 or Windows for Workgroups Installation ------------ 1) MailRed two things: Firstly it redirects mail from one mailbox to another address, where the address can be another mailbox or any other valid MS Mail address. To do this, MailRed logs into MSMail as the mailbox and resends the mail to the redirection address. Secondly, it processes script files that users sent to MailRed and builds a routing table, so that MailRed knows which mailbox to check and to whom it should redirect the messages. MailRed also needs a person who is responsible for its correct operation. Any time MailRed processes a script or when it detects an error, it sends a message to this person's mailbox. The address of this person is located in the INI file under "Admin". This is not the same as "Admin" in your MS Mail environment and it should be a real person who accesses their mail regularly. 2) MailRed requires a single user mailbox on your Microsoft Mail system in order to work with Microsoft Mail. You have to create this mailbox before installing MailRed. On a Microsoft Mail Postoffice this is done via ADMIN.EXE. MailRed needs this mailbox for communcation with the users on your postoffice. We suggest that you use "MailRed" as the mailbox name and "MailRed" as the alias. Note: No other person should use this mailbox!!! Do not use the real Admin's mailbox for this purpose, because MailRed seems to work but in fact doesn't. 3) Create a directory on your server and copy MailRed.EXE and MailRed.INI into it. We suggest that you create a directory called MailRed below your MAILEXE, so it is clear that MailRed belongs to MS Mail. Note: If you want to run MailRed as a Service on Microsoft NT, you need to install it on a local drive. For more information about MailRed as a Service read the section "Installing MailRed as a Microsoft NT Service" below. 4) Edit MailRed.INI and change the configuration so that it will fit your needs. MailFax.INI is plain ASCII file where each option is on a different line. It is similar to your WIN.INI. The options are: ---------------- MailDrive= is the drive or path where your mail database is located. If you have more than one postoffice, add a line for every postoffice. The first line has to be the drive where MailRed's mailbox is located. (The one you created in step 2) can also be the full path or UNC name like M:\MAILDATA or \\SERVER\SHARENAME Note: If you want to run MailRed as a Windows NT Service and your postoffice is not local, you need to use UNC. If your postoffice is local, you need to use C:\MAILDATA or C:\AGPO or C:\WGPO or whatever directory your postoffice is located. MailBox= is the mailbox which MailRed should use. Its the mailbox you created in step 2. Password= is the password for the mailbox you created in step 2. Admin= is the full MS address of MailRed's Admin. MailRed will send error reports (mostly attempts with a wrong passwords) to this address. A sample address is: YOURNETWORK/YOURPOSTOFFICE/YOURNAME HelpFile= is the file which MailRed sends to the user if it receives a message with HELP in the subject or body of the message. WriteLogFile= If is True, MailRed will write a log file called MRYYMMDD.LOG, where YY is the year, MM is the month and DD is the day. LogPath= is path where MailRed will write the log file. If is empty, MailRed writes the log into the directory where MailRed.EXE resides. Verbose= If is True, MailRed displays and log everything, whereas if is False, it will display and log only if there is a real action. WriteStatisticFile= If is True, MailRed will write a statistic file called MRYYMMDD.CSV, where YY is the year, MM is the month and DD is the day. You can use Excel or any other program which imports delimited text files, to run your statistics. StatisticPath= is path where MailRed will write the statistic file. If is empty, MailRed writes the statistic into the directory where MailRed.EXE resides. Language= If is ENG, MailRed uses English for all its messages and log files. Supported values for are ENG English DEU German FRA French DetectInfiniteLoop= If is True, MailRed will check each redirection for an infinite loop and will send a message to Admin if it detects one. A infinite loop is when "A" redirects to "B", "B" redirects to "C" and "C" redirects back to "A". Without detecting the infinite loop, MailRed would redirect every message from "A" to "B", then to "C" and then back to "A", which results in a lot of network traffic and fills the mailbox if the keep option is activated. Note: MailRed checks only for a postoffice address, not for gateway address. So it would not detect infinite loops when a gateway is involved. InfoMsgAsCCToAdmin= If is True, MailRed will send a CC to admin for every system message sent to a user (status sheet and so on). RedirToSender= If is False, MailRed will check if the sender address is the same as the redirection address. If so, MailRed will not redirect the messages and keeps a copy of the message in the mailbox, even when message keep is not enabled. DestroyMailHeader= If is True, MailRed will not redirect the header of a message. The header is the first part of the message text which describes the routing information about the message (From,To,CC). Usualy you see this header only in the DOS Client of MSMail. The Windows Client of MSMail destroys the header. AddRedirHeader= If is True, MailRed will add a short header to every redirected message, so that the recipient knows from which address this message was redirected. It will show the From, To and CC's of the original message. AddRedirHeaderCC= If is False, MailRed will supress the CC's in the header of the message. FastRedir= If is True, MailRed will try to do a fast redirection. In a fast redirection, MailRed does not touch the message at all, it simply moves a pointer inside MSMail's database to point to another user. A fast redirection uses less network resources, because no files are written. MailRed checks every message if it can do a fast redirection and if there is something in the messages which makes a fast redirection impossible, it will continue with normal redirection. To qualify a message for fast redirection, the sender, all to's and CC's and the new recipient need to be on the same postoffice. Note: DestroyMailHeader and AddRedirHeader are not applicable in fast mode, because MailRed does not touch the message. StatusAllAsFile= If is True, MailRed will convert STATUS ALL messages to a file and send it as an attachment. If is False, MailRed will send it as a note text. ExcludeGateway= If is given, MailRed will not redirect any messages to this gateway. For every gateway you want to exclude add one line. Assume you want to exclude your Fax, your MHS and your SMTP gateway, add three lines, each with the gateway you want to exclude, like: ExcludeGateway=FAX ExcludeGateway=MHS ExcludeGateway=SMTP AbsentExcludeGateway= If is given, MailRed will not send absent messages to this gateway. For every gateway you want to exclude add one line. Assume you want to exclude your Fax, your MHS and your SMTP gateway, add three lines, each with the gateway you want to exclude, like: AbsentExcludeGateway=FAX AbsentExcludeGateway=MHS AbsentExcludeGateway=SMTP AbsentExcludeAddress=
If
is given, MailRed will not send absent messages to this address. For every address you want to exclude add one line. Assume you want to exclude a Internet mailing list add line with the address you want, like AbsentExcludeAddress=SMTP:MSMAIL-L@YaleVM.CIS.Yale.Edu SendAbsentEvery= is the count of minutes that MailRed waits before sending a second absent notification to the same address. default to 0, which means that every time a absent message is sent. Assume you want an absent notification only once a day to an address, add the line SendAbsentEvery=1440 ExcludeSubject= If is at any place in the subject, MailRed will not redirect the messages. For every text you want to exclude add one line. Assume you want to exclude all messages with a subject of confidential or secret, add the lines ExcludeSubject=confidential ExcludeSubject=secret SingleCycle= If is True, MailRed will run only a single cycle and exits thereafter. This is usefull if you want to run MailRed and External on one DOS maschine. Interval= is the count of seconds that MailRed waits between processing messages. BreakTime=