BVSNews - The Newsletter from BVSTools.com Issue 3 - February 23rd, 2005 In This Issue: From the Desk of Brad - We Want Your Opinions on LPAR Pricing! - - GreenBoard Discussion Forum - - Spooled File Tools (SPLTOOL) Reaches 20,000 downloads! - Software News - MAILTOOL Major Update Completed! - - Job Watch (JOBWATCH) Application Released! - - Free Trial Keys Available for Most Software! - FAQ Snap Shot - How do I determine the version of your software that I am using? - Featured Testimonial Featured Software - Output Queue Trigger (OUTQTRG) - ======================================================= From the Desk of Brad --------------------- - We Want Your Opinions on LPAR Pricing! - With Logical Partitioning quickly becoming quite popular, we here at BVSTools.com would like to hear your thoughts on pricing for separate LPARs on the same machine. The way things are now, BVSTools.com has always charged per machine with no tierred pricing, low costs, free support and free software upgrades. Talking with some of you, we are finding that the split of those who think software should be charged per partition (instead of per machine) is about 50/50. Other ISVs have quickly jumped on the "charge by partition" bandwagon, but we would like to hear input from our customers first. We want to hear from anyone with an opinion. So please contact us at your leisure and let us know what you as a customer feel is fair, and more importantly, why. - GreenBoard Discussion Form - This is just a reminder that if you wish to ask questions, share experiences, tips or techniques on BVSTools.com software, or pretty much anything else, you are encouraged to use the GreenBoard discussion forums available at BVSTools.com. To use this discussion board, just go to https://www.bvstools.com/greenboard/ Questions are still welcome through email as well. You can always find the current contact information for us at ttp://www.bvstools.com/contact.html. - Spooled File Tools (SPLTOOL) Reaches 20,000 downloads! - The number of downloads for SPLTOOL has recently reached 20,000 downloads! We would just like to thank everyone for spreading the word about SPLTOOL and other software available at BVSTools.com! ======================================================= Software News ------------- - MAILTOOL Major Update Completed!- The updates spoken about in the last issue of this newsletter let you know that we were finishing up major enhancements to MAILTOOL to allow you to bypass the IBM SMTP server all together, eliminating a lot of the headaches associated with it. We are happy to announce that the MAILTOOL Plus! addition is now available with the latest version of MAILTOOL. (You can download the latest version from https://www.bvstools.com/mailtool.html) MAILTOOL Plus! allows you to send emails using the MAILTOOL command directly to your mail router or to recipients without intervention from any other source such as the IBM SMTP server. MAILTOOL Plus! takes care of everything and even provides logging with the option for editing and redelivery for emails that are not successfully delivered. This also helps those that have to run a "dual stack" because of the use of a Lotus Notes email server on their machine. With MAILTOOL Plus!, you can now use MAILTOOL and not need to worry about running the IBM SMTP server just to send mails using MAILTOOL. You can read more about this addition and it's features at https://www.bvstools.com/docs/mailtool under the current release documentation. The MAILTOOL Plus! add-on is a seperate registration of $99 for those that feel it is something they want to pursue. I've found that there are those that are happy with the IBM SMTP server, and those that are not. This makes it easy for you to purchase only those tools and features that you need! If you still are not sure what MAILTOOL Plus! can do for you, feel free to contact us and we would be happy to explain this further. - Job Watch (JOBWATCH) Application Released! - BVSTools.com is proud to announce that a new piece of software named Job Watch (JOBWATCH) is now available for download and trial from https://www.bvstools.com/jobwatch.html. JOBWATCH is a major update to the Watch for MSGW (MSGWATCH) utility and allows you to perform any function you want when any job on the system reach any state! This means that if you have a job that enters the MSGW state, you can run any command or program on your system to perform virtually anything you want to have done such as send an email, page your operator, or send a break message to a particular user or users. So far response to this tool has been excellent, and users are finding many different uses for it that even we didn't think of! Updates are possibly planned if users find other options that JOBWATCH can perform for them, such as scanning active jobs to make sure that a certain job or jobs are active, and if not, sending a message. Remember, most of the updates for our software come from user input, so if you have an idea to update an existing tool, or even for a new one, please share it with us! - Free Trial Keys Available for Most Software - BVSTools.com has updated most of our software to allow temporary trials of our software. This means that instead of the nag screens or limitations as in the past, you now can test the full functionality of most of the software available from BVSTools.com! We normally issue 30 day keys, but we understand that in today's world 30 days may not be enough, so we are happy to extend trial periods for as long as is needed. ======================================================= FAQ Snap Shot ------------- - How do I determine the version of your software that I am using? - With any of my software, simply type the command on the command line, prompt on it, then move the cursor to the top line and press the help key. There you will see the version as well as contact information. The OUTQTRG application is one exception. To find the version of this application simply type GO OUTQTRG on the command line and the version will be displayed at the top of the OUTQTRG menu display. More FAQs can be found at https://www.bvstools.com/faq.html. FAQs specific to software can be found in the software documentation section at https://www.bvstools.com/docs/. ======================================================= Featured Testimonial -------------------- "Following the combined use of OUTQTRG and SPL2SPL I have been able to automate a spool file copying procedure without having to write any software to do this. This has saved the Bank a considerable amount of costs both in development costs and further down our processing cycle where a potential cost has been reduced by 95% by simply using SPL2SPL.. I have not had any problem with both of the products and they very compact and easy to use." See more Testimonials at https://www.bvstools.com/testimonials.html ======================================================= Featured Software ----------------- - Output Queue Trigger (OUTQTRG) - Output Queue Trigger (OUTQTRG) allows you to easily set up triggered events when spooled files complete on your system. Using the OUTQTRG utilities, you set up an output queue to be monitored by the OUTQTRG monitoring service. Next, you set up criteria to match spooled files that are created on your system. Matching can be performed on filename, user name, user data, accounting code, and many more spooled file attributes. Generic* and *ALL are also supported for these attributes! For each criteria added, a command is set up to be run. The command that is assigned can include replacement characters for many spooled file attributes such as job name, job number, user name, spooled file number, and many more! When the criteria is met and the output queue monitoring service job is running, the command will be run! This allows you to send messages or emails to users when their reports are ready, or using SPLTOOL and MAILTOOL you can email the report the second it is created! The uses for this utility are endless. It has been requested by many of my current customers, as well as others! For more information on OUTQTRG feel free to visit https://www.bvstools.com/outqtrg.html or contact us directly. ------------------------------------------------ If you would no longer wish to receive a newsletter from BVSTools.com, simply reply to this email with the word REMOVE in the body. ------------------------------------------------ Bradley V. Stone www.bvstools.com