Help on Mail to Web
Changes:
- 26-Oct-1998 IWF Fixed some links to www.choral.org that are now gone
- 02-Feb-1998 IWF Added Question on Mac attachments
The purpose of this document is to introduce the Corporate mail-to-web
system and the way to use it. For more details, look at
help_on_mail_to_web_setup.html.
Overview
Mail to Web is a scheme that allow you to forward your email messages onto
the web without effort or web knowledge. Summarizing, you forward the message
to a mail address on the computer (here, it is webmail@www.choral.org)
with a MailKey (plus a colon ":") starting the subject. Or, youse the
mailkey itself as the address - eg. if your webkey is admigen, then use
admigen@www.choral.org for this machine's General Administration
area. The rest is done for you; the mail will show
up in an indexed list, with a descriptive title (assuming you had a descriptive
subject line somewhere in the attached message), and with various link
(depending on whether any URL's or mail addresses were found in your
mail message).
What is a "MailKey"?
The MailKey is the filing key(s). This word(s) is the word that uniquely defines
where the mail should be filed on the web. On this machine, there is a
file found at
http://www.choral.org/admi/util/mail/webtable.html that contains a
table relating keywords like "schlgen" to an area on this web server
/serv/schl/gen where the presence of a specific file (indexauto.html is
it's name, if you want the details) that both indicates that this area is
allowed to have messages added to it and that contains the list of
files found in the area (with new tags, and some control buttons).
Then select the MailKey to use for forwarding the mail, just find the
special word that corresponds to the area you want to file the mail in.
This can usually be found by looking at the web page just above the
web area of interest - the page that links to the filing area - the MailKey
should be shown beside the link to the area.
Or, you can look through the hundreds of MailKeys found in
http://this_machine's/admi/util/mail/webtable.html.
If you do not recognize the specific path shown in the table, then
compare it with the URL shown at the top of your browser (use the options
box to allow the URL to show if you cannot see it now). Note that the
machine name is first (in this case, that part is "//ohwig01.www.choral.org"
and then follows the path (in this case, http://www.slb.com/admi/util/help", then followed
by the name of the file (in this case "help_mail_to_web.html"). The path
that is found in the mailkey table is http://www.slb.com/admi/util/help". In this case,
there is no MailKey for this area, but "/admi/gen" can be chosen
by using the MailKey "admigen".
How to use the MailKey
Now that you have chosen the MailKey to use, how do you use it in your
mail message? There are two options:
- Forward the message (or resend may be better for Eudora users so that
the complete message is not "quoted") with the forwarded subject being
the chosen MailKey preceded with "strip-". For example, to forward a
message to admigen@www.choral.org, either forward it to
strip-admigen@www.choral.org with a real subject line; or
send to webmail@www.choral.org with the first word in the subject
line being
"strip-admigen: Rest of Original Subject";
The software will find the Subject line
of the attached message to use as a title and a file name (after
cleaning it up a bit). Note that you can use the area's URL path (eg.
"web/proj/cono/mail" instead of the MailKey if that is easier for some
reason (no slash at beginning or end).
- Send a message with the special address as one of the recipients,
and use a Subject line that starts with the MailKey followed directly (no
spaces) with a colon ":". Following this colon, use a descriptive message
subject - two or more words - a full line is even better if it describes
what is in the message (think what would you like to see in a list that
contained your mail message). A space after the colon is optional, and
there may be more colons later in the line if required as part of the
normal subject line (no, you cannot put the message in multiple filling
areas by putting multiple keys on one line!).
Note that the case of the MailKey is not important - if you like uppercase,
OK. If you like to capitalize the first and 4th letter, OK as well. But,
it cannot contain any spaces. Same is true if you use the mailkey as part
of the address instead of on the Subject line.
Setting up New Mail Areas
Firstly, if you are on a different web server, then you need to get Corporate
to install this software on that machine (we do charge for this).
Secondly, ask your webmaster (
fetterley@houston.sns.slb.com in the case of Corporate) to add some areas that
make sense for your projects or for any subject where others within
Schlumberger or Corporate need to share your mail. There should be enough
areas that the quantity per area is not hundreds of messages and not
so many that it is not clear which to look in (usually a compromise).
Thirdly, suggest some MailKeys to your webmaster that are different from
any found in your list of
MailKeys for that server.
Then have him create the area in the web structure as desired. This area
should include a hard-link to the area in the index.html file above it,
and a copy of
indexformat.html suitably set-up for your needs in that area. There
are many options to be considered so spend some time reviewing the options
indexformat.
For a more complete description of the process involved and other options, see
help_on_mail_to_web_setup.html.
Question: Using WebMail with Attachments on MAC - Problems
There are problems interpreting attachments that are send as BINHEX (MIME settings)
from a Macintosh. The short answer is that you must name the file with the
correct MicroSoft extension or it will not be interpreted correctly with the
right filetype when it arrives on the web server and other people try to open
the attachment. If you do not name the file correctly, the user will get a
file of unknown type and unless you tell them explicitly to use MS PowerPoint
(or other application), they will be unable to open the file at all. Even if you
do tell them what to do, this assumes that they are comfortable enough with
their browser to specify applications as they open files (not always true).
So the right answer is to use PC-based file extensions (lower case preferable, but
any should work) for any attachment file that you wish to have other users
open on the web page.
fetterley@houston.sns.slb.com