With SMS-Maker, you can process messages in various ways:
Choosing Program and Message Browser (or pressing F7) will open the message browser: ![]() From here, you can manage SMS messages stored in SMS-Maker's message folders:
The message browser features the following functions:
SMS-Maker maintains three addressbooks: Its own, the one from the cellphone and the one stored on your SIM card. To open the adressbook, click on the adressbook icon ![]() SMS-Maker will automatically copy all adressbooks from the phone as soon as you select it here. If a local addressbook is empty, SMS-Maker will ask you to read and save it from the phone: ![]() Click yes to let SMS-Maker read all entries from the selected sotrage (this may take a while, depending on the number of entries to read). ![]() To add an entry to the selected storage, just enter a new name and number, then press Add. To change an entry, click on it, then change the name or number and press Replace. To delete an entry, just select it and click on the delete ![]() You may copy or move any entry from any addressbook to any other by selecting it and pressing the copy ![]() ![]() Please note: If you modify one of the phone's addressbooks, SMS-Maker will first change the local copy of it. To update the adressbook in your phone, you must press the update ![]() To read the selected storage from your phone again, press the refresh ![]()
SMS-Maker can also import your Outlook contacts. This will work with Outlook 2000 (Outlook version 9) and above, Outlook 97 is not supported. To import contacts from Outlook, open the addressbook and (menu program/addressbook or F8), then, in SMS-Maker's addressbook, click on the Outlook icon ![]() ![]() Now, select all entries you want to import and click Import. If you saved mobile phone numbers to different fields in Outlook, just repeat reading and importing for other field names until all contacts are imported in SMS-Maker. ![]()
Selecting Send SMS now! from the main menu or pressing F6 will open the send SMS dialog: ![]() Enter the recipient's phone number in international or national format (don't use spaces, dashes or slashes) and your message text here, then click send SMS to send your message instantly. To send multiple messages, enter as many phone numbers as you want and seperate them by semicolon. If you have entries in your local addressbook, you may also choose names from it instead of typing the recipient's number. Click on the addressbook icon ![]() Your message text is usually limited to 160 characters. However, if you're using an unregistered copy of SMS-Maker, a short ad message will be added to every message and your message text must be a little shorter. To bypass this limit, you can check the option auto-split message text. If this option is used, SMS-Maker will automatically split up your text and send it with multiple messages. Watch the text field caption to see how many characters your message contains and with how many messages it will be send. If auto-split message text is activated, you may also choose to send your splitted text in reverse order. This will cause SMS-Maker to send the last part of your text as the first message. This way, the recipient will get the first part of your text as the last message. You may also choose one or more of the follwing options:
In order to send SMS messages automatically, you have to set up an outgoing directory and a timer interval. See section Configuration for further details. Then, activate sending of SMS messages by selecting Sending Active from the Program menu or by pressing F2. If sending of SMS is active, the menu entry will be checked and the outgoing arrow in the program's icon will turn green. SMS-Maker will now check your outgoing directory for new files to send. Since version 0.4, there's an ActiveX component included in SMS-Maker which makes creating these messages from other applications, other computers or webservers a breeze. You can use this component from any Windows developing environment which supports ActiveX objects (like Visual Basic, Delphi, etc.), in VBA from any Office application or Active Server Pages on webservers. See section 6. Create SMS files with SMSMAKER.DLL for further details. If SMS-Maker finds a file with the correct format in the outgoing directory, it'll send it automatically and delete it after sending it successfully (if an error occured, the file won't be deleted). To use SMS-Maker on a network, just share this folder and give other computers the right to write files to it, it's that simple :-)
Since version 0.7, SMS-Maker can take actions based on the contents of incoming messages. This extremely useful feature allows you to forward messages automatically to one or more recipients, execute an kind of program, batch file or script or query and modify databases and let SMS-Maker send the results back to you by SMS. Select Settings, Job Control, click on the job control icon ![]() ![]() SMS-Maker allows five types of jobs: forward, exec, query, mailbox and sendmail. Each job gets a short text as unique identifier. This way, SMS-Maker can determine, if there is a corresponding job that matches the beginning of an incoming message. But you may also set up a default-job, which doesn't need an identifier. This job will be triggered for all messages that don't have an identifer. Hence, there can be only one default job. With this default job, you can save all incoming SMS-messages to a database, for example. Click on Edit to modify an existing job or Delete to remove a job. To add a new job, click New... and choose the type of job you want to create: ![]()
To set up a new forward job, enter the identifier (or leave blank for your default job), a name and a description. Next, you choose to which number(s) incoming messages will be forwarded to. You can save numbers with your job, send them together with the message or query them from a database. ![]() That's all you need to enter. Additionally, you may choose to forward the message as a flash SMS or request a delivery confirmation from your Service Center. Optionally, you may allow or deny starting this job form certain phone numbers for security reasons. While editing your job, you'll always see a bold example message on the right. This example demonstrates how an incoming SMS must look like in order to trigger this job. To activate your new job, check the corresponding box at the bottom of this dialog. Please note: If a job is not active, it won't be executed!
With an exec job, you can start any program, batch file or script by incoming messages. Use this kind of job to start backups, reboot computers or whatever you want. ![]() For exec jobs, you also need an identifier, a name und a description. Then enter the command line to execute and/or parameters to pass to the program. if you don't enter a command line or parameters, you must send these values by SMS. The command line must not necessarily be an executable program. Any file that is associated to an application by its extension will do. This way, you can start WSH scripts, play sounds or music or open any kind of document. Additionally, you may specify a working directory to start the process in. In some cases programs need their program directory to be the current directory in order to find certain files. This option is quite helpful to start batch files. You may also choose to start the program in a hidden window (invisible) and to send a notification message back to the sender of the message or any other number or list of numbers. This notification can be send as flash SMS and you can also request a delivery confirmation for it. As for all other jobs, you can enter phone numbers to allow or deny execution of this job.
With query jobs, you can do any kind of database work: Query, Insert, Update or Delete data from any windows data source. No matter of you want to change an Excel sheet, query information from a SQL-Server or delete records from an Access database, a query job will do it. Just set it up and send a SMS message from whereever you are. ![]() Query jobs also need an identifier (unless you want your job to be the default job), a name and a description. Next, you'll have to set up the database part. To specify which database to use, you must enter a ADO (Active Data Objects) connection string. This string specifies which driver and database to use. If you don't know what this means, just click on the Build button, select the driver you want to use and the database file or system datasource name (DSN). SMS-Maker will automatically build the connection string for you. Then, select wether you want to get the database query from the message or save it with the job. This query string must contain a valid SQL (Structured Query Language) command. Click on Help to get more information on how to build SQL commands. You can use up to 10 placeholders in your SQL commands (<#1>, <#2>...<#10>). these placeholders will be replaced with values sent with an incoming message. You can also use the system parameters <$+sender> or <$sender> to use the sender's phone number (international or national format) in your SQL commands. This way, you can query information with the sender's number as the criteria or create new entries or tables with the sender's phone number. To return a result SMS message, check the option Send a result message. This message will, for example, send recordsets from a query command or return the result of other commands like insert, update or delete to the sender of the job messge or any other recipient. Activate Send even if SELECT result is empty to send a result message, even if no matching data was found. As for all jobs, you can enter a list of phone numbers to allow or deny executing your query jobs. If this list is empty, no restrictions apply.
The mailbox job allows to take actions in two ways: To let SMS-Maker check your POP 3 box and send you a notification via SMS as soon as there are new eMails and to query certain eMails to be sent right onto your portable's display. ![]() Like most other jobs, the mailbox job needs an identifier and a name. Optionally, you can enter a brief description. In order to have SMS-Maker check your POP3 mailbox, you need to provide the mailboxes settings (servername, port, username, password - click 'Test' to make sure, that the settings are correct) in the job's dialog. Type the number, where all notifications and requested eMail bodies will be sent to in the field 'Send all SMS messages to this/these number(s)'. Clicking the tab 'Notification' will open the job's settings for sending notifications to your phone when new eMails arrive. Here, you can define filters telling SMS-Maker, in which cases to send a notification and in which not - this comes in handy if you want to filter out spam or ads. If you don't apply any exceptions, you'll get notifications for any incoming eMails. Having done this, SMS-Maker will send you a list containing the ID, sender, subject and size of new messages as soon as your mailbox was checked by the job. The interval in which SMS-Maker checks the mailbox can be set in minutes or hours. ![]() Clicking the tab 'Message request' will open the program's settings for forwarding new message's bodies to your phone. If the option 'Allow requesting particular eMail messages by SMS' is active, SMS-Maker will forward the mail's body to your mobile upon receiving the job's identifier and the mail's ID by SMS (eg. >m1<125). Additionally, you can choose how many messages SMS-Maker should send to forward the eMail's text to your mobile. Leave the field blank if you don't want to set a limit or enter the number of SMS'. When setting a limit, please note, that the rest of the message will be truncated if it exceeds the limit. Checking 'Strip HTML code from text' will remove all HTML tags from incoming eMails and forward only the text passages to your phone. Note: Activating 'Strip HTML code from text' will strip everything encased between < and >.
Sendmail jobs can be used to trigger SMS-Maker to send predefined eMail messages. ![]() To make this job work you need to provide the job identifier (unless you want it to be your default job) and the job's name. The recipient(s), where the eMail will be sent to can either be sent with the triggering SMS, predefined in the job's settings or extracted from a database. Job rescrictions can be applied here, too, to either allow or deny starting this job from certain phone numbers. Compose the eMail that will be sent by providing message subject and message text. If you want one or more attachments to be sent along with the eMail, click the open folder-button (on the right), choose the file and click 'Add'. Repeat this until all the files you want to be send are listed. Remove files from the attachment list by selecting them and clicking Remove. Note: When assembling the eMail's subject and body, you can use SMS-Maker's placeholders (such as <#1> and <#2>), system parameters (e.g. <$sender> and <$sendername>) for the subject, the message text and even for files to be attached. Those placeholders will be replaced with values sent by SMS before the eMail is sent.
By choosing Program > Pre-paid card info... or using STRG+I SMS-Maker will send a query to the service center, requesting your pre-paid card's credit status. This feature applies for pre-paid cards, only.
This feature allows to enter a cash code and charge your pre-paid card. Choose Program > Recharge pre-paid card from the main menu or press CTRL+H: ![]() This option also applies to pre-paid cards, only. Since there's no international standard to accomplish querying a cash card's balance or recharge it, each mobile network has its own service numbers for this purpose. These numbers and codes can be configured in the mobile network dialog. See the configuration section for more details. |