NOTE: SOME FUNCTIONALITY EMPLOYS JAVASCRIPT soyMAIL – 7. Miscellaneous Topics

soyMAIL

7. Miscellaneous Topics

7.1 Run-time Problem Solving
7.2 Inconsistent State Data
7.3 Site Contact / Mailing Lists
7.4 General Access To Help

Miscellaneous soyMAIL features and other topics.

7.1Run-time Problem Solving

When an error is reported, either fatal or in the status panel, the source code module name and line number of the reporting point is included as an HTML comment (the page source needs to be opened and searched) to assist in locating and rectifying issues.

<!-- ***** REPORTING MODULE:LINE IS MESSAGE:2822 ***** -->
Please include this information when reporting problems.

Defining the system-level logical name SOYMAIL$WATCH to either TRUE or the IP address of the client to be observed provides a plain-text report designed to assist in solving configuration or software issues with soyMAIL.

7.2Inconsistent State Data

To prevent data corruption and inconsistent behaviours soyMAIL performs integrity checks on the state data it propagates from request to request. It is possible for a user session spanning a soyMAIL update (version release) to see the following error status message.

Inconsistent state data (version). Restarting session.

This is of no concern. The change in version has been noted by the software and to prevent any potential inconsistencies in data structures causing subtle or gross problems it has reinitialized the state data resulting in an effectively empty session. The user should just reopen (<u>not</u> refresh/reload) the particular page.

The second variation of this message is a little more concerning.

Inconsistent state data (corruption). Restarting session.

soyMAIL maintains a hash of the state data which is propagated with it. The hash is recalculated and compared at the next request. This error reports the comparison failed and indicates data corruption in the request state. The session is effectively emptied as a precautionary measure. Instances of this message should be very rare and if persistent carefully investigated.

7.3Site Contact / Mailing Lists

The logical name SOYMAIL_CONTACT_LIST can be used to specify a logical list of contact lists (in addition to any personal contacts). This functions as a multi-value logical name with each value being the logical name for, or actual file specification of, an LDIF list or a traditional VMS-style mailing list (each line in the file contains a single address). For example:

$ DEFINE /SYSTEM SOYMAIL_CONTACT_LIST - ALL_USERS_LIST,GROUP1_USERS_LIST,GROUP2_USERS_LIST,GROUP3_USERS_LIST,- EXTERNAL_LIST,MAILING_LIST_LIST

Where ALL_USERS_LIST is a VMS-style, so are GROUP1_USERS_LIST and GROUP2_USERS_LIST. MAILING_LIST_LIST is a file containing a VMS-style mailing list of the mailing lists supported by the system. For the above it might contain five lines with:

ALL_USERS_LIST GROUP1_USERS_LIST GROUP2_USERS_LIST GROUP3_USERS_LIST EXTERNAL_LIST

These can then be selected to mail to the entire list.

LDIF Address Lists

Even large LDIF address lists (hundreds or thousands of items), such as might be exported from corporate MS Exchange servers, can be loaded relatively efficiently by soyMAIL. This can be further improved through processing the list using soyMAIL as a command-line utility.

$ MCR <location>:SOYMAIL /LDIF=PURGE <input-file-name> <output-file-name>

This purges all but soyMAIL relevant elements from the data.

7.4 General Access To Help

Context-sensitive help is available to authenticated users accessing private mail. A page built from the consolidated help information (and distinctly resembling the print page for context-sensitive help) is available for unauthenticated (general) access. Use the following URL to access this page.

http://the.host.name/cgi-bin/soymail?help