Ferngate Administrators Guide

Introduction

Ferngate is a high performance multi-threaded server application. It provides a variety of services via SMS. The user interacts with Ferngate by sending it short text messages. Ferngate responds with short text messages containing the requested information or confirming the requested action has been performed. Ferngate is best demonstrated by some simple examples:

Ferngate interacts with an SMSC via SMPP, or it can be used in small systems using a GSM Modem. It provides services by sending and receiving SMS messages from portable phones. It connects to standard POP and SMTP servers to provide Email services. It also contains an SMTP server, so Emails can be directed to it. The users interact with Ferngate by sending it commands in the form of SMS messages. Ferngate maintains user profile and state information on each user. The users are identified by the phone number from which their SMS messages comes. There is therefore no need for authentication or login.

After an initial registration users can, for example, list the messages in their Email inbox by simply sending Ferngate an SMS text message containing the command ‘list’, or just the letter ‘L’. All commands can be abbreviated to the first letter. The following sections provide more details on each of the main ferngate facilities.

Email Facilities:

Ferngate provides complete Email facilities. Initial registration for users is simply a matter of sending a SMS message to Ferngate containing:
user username password pophost

From then on, the user can check their inbox by sending the command list which will respond with something like:

The first line tells you that there are three new messages and a total of seven messages in the inbox. The messages are listed with newest ones first.

If there are more Emails in the inbox than will fit within in one message, the user can request the next page by sending the command ‘more’. There are commands for forward, reply, delete, etc, and these can be used in combination. For example, with the above list the user might respond with the message

Del 75 3 forward 6 john read 2

in order to delete the first three messages, forward the 2^nd one to a colleague and read the last one to see what shares George is suggesting we buy. Support for IMAP hosts, and facilities for transferring messages to other folders on the IMAP host will be added.

When we read the message from George it may well not all fit in one SMS message. If what we get finishes with … this implies that there is more to the message and we can use the command more to obtain the next part of it. In order to reduce the size of Email messages, multiple lines included from previous messages are reduced to >..

So a message containing

>What colour is the wallpaper

>in the bedroom going to be

>do you think

blue would be best

will be reduced to

>…

blue would be best

If there is only one message in your inbox, a list page is not produced and the message itself is shown.

In order to send a message, the send command is used as in

Send george We need to get some new wallpaper for the front bedroom

Or

Send jack@list .com please remove me from your mailing list

If the Email address you provide in the send command does not contain an @, Ferngate will first look for the name in your contact list and obtain the Email address from that. If it is not found in the contact list, it will just add @pophost from your user setting.

The event facilities include normal calendar functions like making diary entries for meetings or reminders in addition to repeating events and command functions. For example, you may set up an event to send you a list of messages in your inbox at 8:30am weekdays so that you can process your inbox on the train each morning. Similarly, you may request it to list your todo’s each morning.

To set up an event, send a message containing the following fields:

Event event_type repeater date_time –notification_offset message

Some examples follow:

Event reminder weekdaily 3pm –10 mins Pick up your daughter from school

Event meeting 1530 3/4/2001 Parcom merger meeting

Event list daily 900

Event todo weekdaily 230

Event reminder yearly 5pm 13/3/2001 Your wife’s birthday tomorrow don’t forget the flowers

In providing chat facilities, care needs to be given to three areas.

1. Anonymity must be preserved while providing a simple mechanism to remember who you are talking to.

2. It must be possible for users to decide when and if they want to participate in random chat.

3. It must be possible to effectively block individuals who you no longer wish to converse with.

These are handled by Ferngate by allowing users to chat to others using nicknames. You can enable or disable both chatting and new chatting and turn reception from a particular user off and on.

Todo List

Ferngate will keep a list of todo items for you. You can add items to the list with the command:

Todo theitemtext

For example:

‘Todo write the report on the new merger’ or

‘Todo get a present for Karen’

You can then list current todo items with the command ‘Todo’, which will return something like:

1. write the report on the new merger

2 get a present for Karen

You can then remove items with:

delete 1

You can also request a todo list each working day with:

Event todo daily 900

You can post news items with the post command:

Post rec.humor Funny Joke. an Englishman an Irishman and a Kiwi were traveling together….

The first sentence is used as the subject, in this case Funny Joke

You can then read a news group with:

News rec.humor

which will list new postings to that group. You can then read a particular item with:

Read n

n being the number of the item you wish to read.

The config file contains a setting for the bulletin directory.

You can place a file in here called bulletin.txt or a series of files.

So, for example, you might have files:

Specials.txt products.txt and help.txt

Users can then use the commands:

View specials

View help

View products

If the contents of the file will not fit in one message, it will end with … and Ferngate will respond to the command ‘more’ with the remainder of the file

Command: Babble
Function: Send an instant message to a DBabble user on a PC. See http://netwinsite.com/dbabble Abbreviation: b
Syntax: b[abble] <user> <message>
Example: babble fred Im nearly there, should be with you in about 5 mins.
Description: This command enables you to send an instant message to a PC user, provided they are using Netwins DBabble instant message system. See http://netwinsite.com/dbabble for details. The client for DBabble can be either a web browser or a free windows GUI. Ferngate sends messages to DBabble by Emailing them to dbabble_user@domain. The DBabble server includes an SMTP server which can receive these messages. If DBabble and a normal Email server are running on the same machine, DBabble can be set to receive Emails on a different port and the Email server can be set to forward dbabble_xxx to this port.

Command: Chat
Function:
Abbreviation: c
Syntax: c[hat] <nickname>
Example: chat new
Chat george
Description: This provides a safe SMS chat method. Chat messages always go through Ferngate and use aliases or nicknames. You can select a new random chat partner with:
chat new
Chat to someone whose phone number you know with:
chat 021666666 hi there jim
Chat to someone you know using a nickname like:
keep jim phone=021666666
chat jim hi there j

Command: Delete
Function: Delete Email messages, todo items or calendar events.
Abbreviation: d
Syntax: d[elete] <number>
Example: d 3
Description: Used to delete Emails, events or todo items.
After a list command you can do del n to delete nth Email

Command: Forward
Function: Forward an Email you have recieved to another Email address.
Abbreviation: f
Syntax: f[orward] <number> <address>
Example: forward 15 roger@abc.com
Description: This enables you to forward email messages you recieve to other people.

Command: Get
Function: Get contact details on someone in your list of contacts
Abbreviation: g
Syntax: g[et] <name>
Example: get fred
Description: This enables you to retrieve the information you have stored about a particular contact. See the keep command for how to store this information.

Command: Help
Function: Provides list of Ferngate commands available.
Abbreviation: h
Syntax: h[elp] <command>
Example: help babble
Description: This provides brief help on the commands ferngate will accept. To get help with a particular command use the syntax above. The command help by itself will show all commands, starting from the user command.

Command: Leave
Function: Leave a chat group that you were previously subscribed to.
Abbreviation: le
Syntax: le[ave] <chatgroupname>
Example: leave jazzclub
Description: If you join a chat group, and then decide that you no longer wish to recieve messages from that chat group, you can leave the group with this command. Messages to the chat group in question will no longer be sent to your phone.

Command: News (NOT AVAILABLE in version 1)
Function: Display recent posts to an internet news group
Abbreviation: n
Syntax: n[ews] <newsgroup>
Example: news rec.humour
Description: This enables +++

Command: News Move (NOT AVAILABLE in version 1)
Function: Display recent posts to an internet news group
Abbreviation: nm
Syntax: a[nswer] <message>
Example: ans yesseriy
Description: This enables

Command: user
Function: Setup the Email account to check for Email from.
Abbreviation: u
Syntax: u[ser] <your username> <your password> <your pophost>
Example: user bob qwerty netwin.co.nz
Description: This tells Ferngate which Email account to check for mail, etc. You only have to use this command once, the first time you use Ferngate (if you change Email accounts you will have to re-do it for your new Email account). Having specified your Email account in this way there is no need to login each time you use your Email via Ferngate.

Command: View
Function:
1. Display current values for a user setting.
2. Display a bulletin or other information file.
3. View events list
4. View Ferngate version information
Abbreviation: v
Syntax: view <setting>
Example: view nickname
Description:

Command: Write
Function: Store a user setting.
Abbreviation: w
Syntax: w[rite] <feild>=<value>
Example: write nickname=mrcool
Description: This enables you to change any of your user preferences. The feilds available to be changed by this command are:

reply_send
reply_babble
nickname
chat
chat_new
signature

The configuration settings are stored in ferngate.ini this is a text file that you can edit with any standard text editor. Lines starting with a # symbol are comments.

{"recv_smtp_port", "1025", FALSE, INI_NO_FALLBACK},

{"reply_sms_server","127.0.0.1",FALSE, I_HOST},