
















                     ******* THE I-MAIL MESSAGER *******
                 (c) Copyright - Challenge Business Systems
                             Burnaby, B.C. Canada
                                 March, 1995
                             All Rights Reserved

                         IMPORTANT SYSOP INFORMATION                     
                     ******* THE I-MAIL MESSAGER *******


SYSOP INFORMATION

      There are several keys points for you, as the sysop that you should be
aware of regarding this program . We want you to have this information as a
reference because we think its important that sysops know as much as possible
about any program running on their BBS.

The Key Points:

     1) The differences between the 4.01 and 4.10 version is minor and only
        affects writing messages but WCCODE 4.10 does contain 1 bug fix in
        this area so we incorporated it.  Uploading attached files in
        "Write Messages" from a wccode application does NOT work in 4.01.
        This was fixed in 4.10.  Therefore there are changes in a help
        screen that remove the warning not to use it if you install the
        4.10 version. Also, users of the 4.10 version will NOT be asked if
        they wish to upload a file to attach to the message when first
        selecting "Write Message". 
        
     2) Using Wildcat temporary directories with WCCODE (both versions). If
        your node batch startup files don't contain a SET TEMP=<path>
        statement then WCCODE is going to look for a directory called TEMP
        in the node's home work directory (i.e. C:\WILDCAT\WCWORK\NODE1\TEMP)
        and create this directory if it doesn't exist. If you don't want
        this to happen then you must tell WCCODE what temporary directory
        to use for temp. files the program and user creates.

        WARNING - Do NOT use the same SET TEMP=<path> statement such as
        SET TEMP=C:\TEMP for all your nodes. The program uses the same file
        names for all users on at the same time (so does Wildcat).  This
        will cause errors on message text file uploads and new messages.  

     3) All user's names and address are placed in individual datafiles in the
        same directory as the IMAIL program. The naming system for these files
        are unique to each user based on their user id number assigned to them
        by the BBS. Example - User 101 on the BBS would be assigned a datafile
        called IM000101.DAT where IM stands for the IMAIL program, .DAT is the
        file extension for datafile and 101 is their Wildcat User Id Number,
        leading 0's are placed after the IM and in from of the id number, if
        necessary to ensure the file name is always a length of 12 characters.
        The first time a user enters the program their datafile is created 
        automatically for them.  

     4) All user's e-mail message taglines are placed in the same directory as
        the IMAIL program as well.  The file naming system is the same as the
        datafiles except for the extension. Instead of .DAT all tagline data-
        files are assigned the extension .TAG.

        Tagline datafiles are not automatically created.  The file will only 
        exist if the specific user creates a tagline (why create needless
        files).

     5) This program will NOT allow any user who does not have full join, read
        and write access to your Internet E-Mail conference into the program.
        If you receive complaints from certain users that they can not access
        The I-Mail Messager this will probably be the reason.                      
                     ******* THE I-MAIL MESSAGER *******


SYSOP INFORMATION (Cont.)


        If a user is stopped from entering the program for this reason they
        will have an error message displayed on their screen stating that they
        don't have conference rights. A note will be written to the activity
        log of the node they were on informing you of their attempted access.

     6) All activity such as entering The I-mail Messager and program errors
        are written to the appropriate node's activity log for your review.
        This includes the date & time plus a description of the error, if any.

     7) This program reads the following Wildcat data files.

                    A) Allusers.dat - The User Database
                    B) Confdesc.dat - The Conference Database
                    C) Makewild.dat - The Main Wildcat Configuration File
                    D) Messages.dat - The Message Header Database
                    E) Security.dat - The User's Security Level Database
                    F) Nodeinfo.dat - The User's Node File


     8) This program writes to the following Wildcat data files.

                    1) Allusers.dat - The User Database
                    2) Messages.dat - The Message Header Database
                    3) Activity.??? - The Node's Activity Log File (???
                                      being replaced with the node Number)

     9) What is written to the datafiles.  The following fields are changed
        during the use of the program if the user actually writes messages,
        downloads a message or downloads their name and address list.

        A) The Users Database (ALLUSERS.DAT)

           1) The Messages Written count is increased by 1 each time a
              message is written (and actually saved).
           2) If you are charging messages downloads to the user's Upload/
              Download Ratio (see IMSYSOP.DOC) The Download Kbytes Field
              is increased (+)IK and the Download Files Total is increased
              by (+)1 upon a successful message download. or (+)2K & +(1)
              if they download their name and address list. These file
              sizes are set by the program and can not be changed.  This
              was done because you can determine a file size from within a
              WCCODE program.
            
        B) The Messages Header Database (MSG?????.DAT)
 
           The actual name of this file is MSG plus the your Internet 
           conference number. It is located in your Internet Mail directory.
           New records are added to this file for every message written so
           all relevant fields are updated.  See Item 8 for further changes
           to this file when deletions are made.                      
                     ******* THE I-MAIL MESSAGER *******


SYSOP INFORMATION (Cont.)
                 
    10) If a user elects to delete a message that has a file attached to it
        the file will be deleted from your Internet E-mail attach directory
        upon the user confirming the deletion. The Messager header will have
        both the internal and external files names erased as well.

        While we still show the user their deleted messages on the screen
        (flagged with a "D" in Red) the attached file must be deleted when
        the user confirms the deletion.  This is because Wildcat does not
        remove the attached file when you run Wcpack or Wcrepair.  This
        conforms to what happens when the user selects Wildcat's Delete
        Message. (You can confirm this easily enough if you wish.) 

     WARNING: A) Should a problem arise with any of the datafiles listed
                 above in 5 & 6 The I-Mail Messager will not function
                 properly (and probably the rest of your BBS too). 

              B) Strange things can happen if your user's database and/or
                 the messages database index files become corrupted. This
                 includes putting the wrong user-id number in the message
                 header.  If that happens WCGATE will put the wrong e-mail
                 return name on the message when it exports it to FXUUCIO.

                 This will get your users quite upset when people they know,
                 get personal (confidential?) e-mail from persons the reader
                 has never heard of.  Also the writer won't be able see or
                 read their own messages.  Should your BBS suffer a system
                 crash be sure to run the Wildcat Utility Wcrepair and 
                 re-build these index files. 
              
    11) Our "In-House" testing has shown that the regular (daily?) use of
        WcPack or WcRepair to remove deleted messages and re-index your
        message conferences greatly enhances the overall performance of The
        I-Mail Messager.  
 

                   *********** END OF INFORMATION **********
