ProfitPress Mega CDROM2 …eeware (MSDOS)(1992)(Eng)/ProfitPress-MegaCDROM2.B6I/BBS/RA/SUBDATE.ZIP/SUBDATE.DOC

Text File | 1992-02-01 | 7.1 KB | 187 lines

   ┌────── WARNING ──────────────── WARNING ─────────────── WARNING ──────┐
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   │    THIS IS A BETA VERSION!  This BETA version of SUBDATE has been    │
   │    released to the general public under the following conditions:    │
   W                                                                      W
   A      1: You accept FULL responsibility for any and all damage        A
   R         this software may cause to your system because of bugs       R
   N         or any other unforseen problems.                             N
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   N      2: You should not expect bug fixes or updates with any          N
   G         regularity nor should you expect elaborate docs or           G
   │         packaging.                                                   │
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   └────── WARNING ──────────────── WARNING ─────────────── WARNING ──────┘


DO NOT use this software if any of the above bothers you.  SUBDATE writes
to your message base and does so using new message writing routines so
exercise extreme caution!



SUBDATE;  RACE User editor subscription utility, v0.2


Intro
-----

I've had dozens of questions from RACE users on how they go about getting
RACE to send a message to a user BEFORE that user's subscription runs out.
RACE, being an interactive utility, cannot do this.

RA cannot do this either and so it is apparent there is a need for such a
utility.  SUBDATE is not too fancy but I believe it has everything needed
to get the job done.

SUBDATE works entirely from command line parameters supplied by the Sysop.
These can be typed manually and run while one watches or SUBDATE can be
set up to run in the daily cleanup batch file.  The latter is the preferred
method for a very important reason.

SUBDATE is set up to send a message to a user when that user's expiration
date is =EXACTLY= the number of days away as the number of days parameter
one provides on the command line.  If one runs SUBDATE in a hit and miss
fashion, users about to run out of subscription time are sure to be passed
by.  If run every day, this will not be a problem.

The reason for this is because it is not an easy matter to know if a user
has already received a message about pending expiration of subscription.
Using the exact match method means that the user will only get one message
on the day his/her subscription is X days away.  Of course you'll want to
make sure you only run SUBDATE once a day.

While not designed for logging, SUBDATE's output could be redirected to
a file so you can see who has received a message if run in an unattended
mode.  Of course you could also just look in the message base :-)

 **** IMPORTANT NOTICE ****

While it is possible for the SysOp to manually enter a subscription date in
any date format, RA stores all other dates, and processes ALL dates, in
MM-DD-YY format.

SUBDATE will take the -D parameter and convert the number of days to a
MM-DD-YY format and then compare that to the user's subdate field.  As you
can imagine, if the user's subdate is in any other format, the results when
running SUBDATE.EXE will be unpredictable.


Command Line Parameters
-----------------------

The following are REQUIRED command line parameters.  SUBDATE also has a few
optional parameters and I'll get into those a bit later.


-M<textfile>

This switch defines the text file to use as the message that will be sent
to users whose parameters meet the days parameter.  This should be an
ASCII file.  This file may contain an assortment of codes that will
be replaced by various user data (name, dates, etc.).  See the end of
this document for a complete list of available codes.

-D<days>

This is the number of days in advance to send the message to a user.  This
can be any number of days, even years in advance if you like.  As mentioned
previously, the user's date must be EXACTLY -D<days> away before the
message is sent.

-B<boardnum>

In which message board shall SUBDATE place the notification message?  NO
check is made for an active area nor does SUBDATE have any idea as to
whether or not the user has access to the message board you provide.  The
only check made is to insure a number between 1 and 200 is used here.
You'll probably want to use your general/private message area number.


The following are OPTIONAL command line parameters:


-P

Previously, the default was to NOT post a private message.  This has
changed as of SUBDATE v0.3. The default now is to make the message
private.  Use the -P switch if you do NOT want the message to have
private status.


-F"Mike Janke"

SUBDATE will place "Sysop" (no quotes of course) in the FROM field of the
message unless you force otherwise by using this switch.  In this example,
my name would go in the FROM field in place of the hard coded "Sysop".

IMPORTANT! If your name has spaces in it you *MUST* enclose your name in
double quotes as my name is in the example above. DO NOT use underscores in
your name. If you just use your first name or any single word, do NOT use
the quote marks.


-J<subject>

SUBDATE uses a message subject of "Subscription" by default.  If you would
like a different subject, use this command line switch with the new
subject.  As with the -F switch, if there are spaces in the text, you
*MUST* enclose the entire subject in quotes.  Do not use quotes on a single
word subject.


Examples
--------

example 1: SUBDATE -M\ra\expire30.msg -D30 -B3 -F"Da boss" -J"Send Money" -P

example 2: SUBDATE -M\ra\expire20.msg -D20 -B3 -J"Not much time left" -p

example 3: SUBDATE /d5 /b3 -Jadios -p -M\ra\expire5.msg


As you can see from the examples, switch order is unimportant as is upper
or lower case of switches.  Also, you may use / or - before the switch
letter.  The three examples above could be run one after another in the
daily cleanup.  Since each one affects users with a different number of
days remaining, there will not be any duplicate messages sent to the same
person.


The following control codes are allowed for imported messages:

^FA = user's full name
^FB = user's location
^F3 = user's handle
^F4 = Date of first call
^F5 = date of birth
^F6 = Subscription date
^FC = Password
^FD = Data phone number
^FE = Home phone number
^FF = Date of last call
^FG = Time of last call
^FL = NetMail credit
^FM = Total messages posted
^FO = Security level
^FP = Total calls to the BBS
^FQ = Number of uploads
^FR = Kilobytes of uploads
^FS = Number of downloads
^FT = Kilobytes of downloads
^FU = Minutes used today
^FW = user's first name
^F? = user's file ratio in number of files
^F@ = user's file ratio in kilobytes

If you are not familiar with how these codes work, see the RemoteAccess
documentation.  SUBDATE handles the codes in exactly the same manner.



                                The end.