THE INFORMER PAGE 10

OCTOBER 16, 1991

New E-Mail System

New version of XPRESS Electronic Mail

One of the on-going complaints of our campus
Electronic Mail system was that each person had to
have a number and you had to send messages using
that number. The company that wrote our E-Mail
software (called Xpress from Robelle Consulting in
Surrey )listened long and hard to complaints (from us
and many other customers) and finally modified the
program to accept names rather than numbers. As with
any change this will take some getting used to. Listed
below are some of the features and differences of this
new version.

Features:

° You will have noticed that your list of sendees has
been reduced drastically. You no longer need to
know user number.

¢ When prompted for a user to receive your mes-
sage, type in the persons name instead of a number.
¢ You only have to specify as much of the name as
is necessary to get a direct match.

¢ If you don’t get a direct match, you will be given a
list of persons who match what you input and you
will have to select furthur.

¢ You can get.a list of persons by putting a ‘? at the
end of your input. That is, even if there is a direct
match, the message won’t be sent.

¢ You no longer have to input all recipients on one
line, they can be input one by one on subsequent
lines.

¢ However, you can still send to more than one
person on one line by separating them with a
comma.

¢ And, you can still use the old numbers if you
want.

Examples:

- To send a message to me you could type in
BOB WA

- If you tried to send a message to BOB you would
get a list of people named BOB and would have to
choose furthur.

- You can also type BOB? This will give you a list of
all Bobs on campus from which to choose. (works out
exactly the same as above)

- If you input BOB WA? you would get a list of E-
Mail users that match what you input, in this case, only
one, but the message would NOT be sent. You can use
this feature to find out if someone is actually on the E-
Mail before trying to send them a message.

- If you want to find out the names of all people that
start with a single letter, you must type a ‘?’ after the
letter. That is, type in ‘B?’ to find out all names that
start with ‘B’. If you only typed in ‘B’ and had a distri-
bution list named ‘B’, your message would be sent to
everyone on that distribution list.

- To send to more than one person:

Enter one or more users[no more]: BOB WALKER
{return)

Enter one or more users[no more]: DAPHNE
{return}

Enter one or more users[no more]: 675

{return)

Enter one or more users[no more]: STEVE G
{return}

Enter one or more users[no more]: {return}

NOTE: Ends sending.

OR

Enter one or more users[no more]: Bob
Walker,Daphne,675,Steve G {ret}

Enter one or more users[no more]: {return}
NOTE: Ends sending.

Differences:

¢ The most obvious difference is that you no longer
see the list of people in you mail group. Your own E-
Mail sign-on can be customized to show them if need be.
Initially this may be the most difficult part, not.seeing
the names, but you can easily enquire about names and
users by using the ‘?’ feature as outlined above.

¢ Amore subtle yet serious change is that you are
now prompted for message recipients until you press
return at the [no more] prompt. The assumption is
that you will be sending your message to more than one
person, and you will be entering each name on a sepa-
rate line. When you are finished sending your message
you must tell it that there are no more recipients. You
do this by pressing return at the [no more] prompt.

Possible problems:

Of course, our mail system is set up using first-
name last-name protocol. We've already had one com-
ment on how nice it would be if it was last-name, first-
name. The usual response is supplied here: not yet.

Please call if you have any questions or comments.
2952. Bob Walker.