The CommuniGator application is the client part of the CommuniGate integrated messaging system. It allows you to work with all your messages: e-mail, fax, voice, pager, etc.
You can use it on the same computer the CommuniGate server is installed on, and you can install and use it on other computers connected to the server via AppleTalk. Actually, the communication is AppleEvent-based, so other types of networks can be used, too - as soon as AppleEvent implementations for those networks appear.
You use CommuniGator to compose, send, view and archive your messages, manage your mailboxes, etc. CommuniGator is used to administer the server, too: to configure the server itself or the modules it runs, to control the modules and their queues, etc.
Note: most of the help resources were removed from this application to save space.
Composing Messages
1. Launch CommuniGator and choose New Message from the File menu. The message window appears. The top part of the window contains the "mailer" which allows you to enter the message subject, set the recipients and select files to be attached.
2. The bottom part of the window can be used to compose the body of the message.The "generic" message body can contain styled text, pictures and sounds. Use the Edit and Text menus to compose the message body.
3. Type the subject of the message in the subject field.
4. Click on the Recipients address book icon to open the Address book panel. Use it to specify the recipients for the message.
Using the Address book panel
For each contact you can create a record in an address book. That record should contain the person's name, company name (if any) and contact information. The address book records contain a field for each service type supported with the CommuniGate Server. Those fields allow you to enter the address information: fax number for fax service, e-mail address for e-mail service, etc.
When you compose a message, you can click on the "Recipients" address book icon and the panel appears on the right side of the Mailer. Besides the list of the records in the current address book, the panel displays the service type icon menu and the address entry field (on the bottom).
You can add records to the address book by clicking New. When a record is displayed on screen, the first field contains the addressee name, the field below it may contain the company name or any other "secondary" name. Other fields are addresses and have icons in front of them to indicate the type of servuce they belong to: i.e., fax, voice, pager, e-mail, etc. One of those addresses should have the "default" marker. To edit an existing record, use the Edit button.
When records are entered into an address book, they can be used by selecting them and clicking the "To" button - the addresses of the selected type are extracted from the records and placed into the Recipients list. When the "(•)" icon is selected, the addresses marked as "default" are extracted from the selected records.
To address a message without making an entry in an address book, select the address type from the icon menu and type the address in the field on the right side of the icon menu. Then click the "To" button.
You can create additional Address books and select them using the pop-up menu on the top of the Address book records list. All of these Address books are created on the local disks and are "private" phone books. Server-based "shared" addressed books are disabled in this version.
You can "export" the information from your address books and place it in a regular text file as a tab-delimited text. You can "import" address book records from text files containing tab-delimited records.
Address Formats
The format of the address string depends on the type of the address. For fax, voice and other telephony media, the address is a phone number and should contain the phone number with area code. Symbols '.', '(', ')', '-' and spaces can be used as separators.
To enter an international phone number, use the symbol +, then the country code, the area code and the phone number itself. You can use capital letters instead of digits when entering a phone number: 800-WXY-DEFG is a correct number and means the same as 8009993334. Modem-controlling symbols as ',', '@', '!' are allowed and not excluded when the system composes the actual dial string to be sent to a modem.
E-mail addresses should be written following the RFC822 specifications. To address somebody using the same server, you can either use her/his name as the address or that person's full e-mail address: username@domainname (if you set the domain name when you configured the server). IF A NAME CONTAINS SPACES, EITHER SUBSTITUTE THEM WITH '_' OR ENCLOSE THE NAME IN QUOTE MARKS: to send to the user John Smith type either: John_Smith or "John Smith". If your server domain name is mycompany.com, you can type either:
Michael
or
Michael@mycompany.com
or
"John Smith"
or
"John Smith"@mycompany.com.
or
John_Smith@mycompany.com
Attachments
You can attach any number of files to a message. Use the Attachments button to display the standard dialog box and then select file(s) you want to be sent with the message. If you choose Paste from the Edit menu when the Attachments list is highlighted, the Clipboard icon is added to the list. When such a message is being sent, the current content of the Clipboard is attached to the message.
Note: while you can attach any file to a message going through LAN or WAN e-mail, there are some restrictions on the types of files that can be attached to messages going through other media. See the description of communication modules for details.
Customization
You can choose Options from the Edit menu to tune the CommuniGator application.
Return-Receipts
To be described in the next edition of this document.
Delayed messages
To be described in the next edition of this document.
Assigning Supplementary Attributes
You may specify the additional information for message delivery: fax cover page to use, voice script to use, etc. If the information is not specified, the default values are used (see the communication modules descriptions). To specify attributes... - to be described in the next edition of this document.
Multiple Mailboxes
To be described in the next edition of this document.
Viewing and controlling Log records
To be described in the next edition of this document.
