BVSNews - The Newsletter from BVSTools.com Issue 2 - August 24th, 2004 In This Issue: From the Desk of Brad - Issue 2 of BVSNews! - - Consulting Services - - Online Documentation - Software News - MAILTOOL Major Update - - eRPG SDK is a Hit! - - Reminder: New Registration Key Process - FAQ Snap Shot - Upgrading or Replacing Your AS/400 and BVSTools.com Software Keys - Featured Testimonial Featured Software - FTP Tool (FTPTOOL) - ======================================================= From the Desk of Brad --------------------- - Issue 2 of BVSNews! - Issue 1 of BVSNews was a big success! Thanks for all of the comments and suggestions from each of you that responded! These newsletters will be used to keep customers of BVSTools.com informed on new products, product updates, as well as any changes that are happening with the site itself. From time to time we will also put together surveys for our customers to fill out online to help us with certain decisions. We’d ask that everyone take a couple of minutes to complete any available surveys. If there is any other type of information you would like to read about, again, feel free to contact us. - Consulting Services - Many times we are contacted with questions regarding consulting services that are availble. We have outlined the main areas that we are able to provide consulting services for at https://www.bvstools.com/training.html. If a certain topic isn't listed, feel free to ask if that service is provided. We also receive hundreds of emails a week asking for assistance. We will always respond to each of them, but from time to time this assistance is more than we are able to offer for free though normal email communications. If you require help that goes beyond the normal scope of an email, we normally offer consulting services as an option. Please don't take the offer of consulting as a way to stop the communications. It's simply a way that we can offer the best possible assistance to you while keeping things fair for our paying customers. We love to help and we do offer both on and off site consulting as well as on site training and presentations! - Online Documentation - We receive emails frequently asking how to perform certain options in our software. Most of these questions are covered in the online documentation for the software. We are working on providing documentation for all of the software we provide. Right now we have documentation for most of the more popular software. You can find online documentation for our software at: https://www.bvstools.com/docs/ Included in the documentation is a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section for each piece of software that you can use to answer certain questions quickly. As always, feel free to contact us for any questions or items that are not clear or covered in the documentation. ======================================================= Software News ------------- - MAILTOOL Major Update - We are currently putting the finishing touches on a new version of MAILTOOL that will allow you to send emails without the use of the IBM SMTP server. This means there is no more configuration required of the IBM SMTP Mail Server as releated to MAILTOOL. Instead, the new version of MAILTOOL will have the option use it's own internal API to send emails directly to the recipients mail servers, or a mail router if specified. This will be MAILTOOL v4.0 and will be released very soon. The use of the internal MAILTOOL API will be controlled by a parameter on the MAILTOOL command. This parameter will default to use the normal IBM SMTP server so that when this version is installed it will not change any of the current functionality. If anyone is interested in beta testing this new version feel free to contact us. Most importantly would be users who have an AS/400 that does not have direct access to the Internet and requires the use of an internal mail router to send email from their AS/400. - eRPG SDK is a Hit! - Thanks to everyone who responded to the call for Beta testers for the eRPG SDK (www.erpgsdk.com). We were able to fix a couple bugs, add a few new features, and make the install process even easier! So far the response to the eRPG SDK has been very positive! We will hopefully be doing some advertising for the eRPG SDK in the future to get more word out as we feel this product is a great stepping stone in getting your AS/400 information to the Internet using simple RPG functions! The eRPG SDK was recently released to the public for download and registration. You can download a trial version of the eRPG SDK as well as view documentation and examples at https://www.erpgsdk.com. - Reminder: New Registration Key Process - BVSTools.com has incorporated a new registration key process that consists of two main points. The first point is for existing customers, and the second is for new customers. Existing customers that are updating their versions of most of the popular software available from BVSTools.com will need to email me with their serial number and model number so that a new key can be generated (free of charge). Your serial number can be found using the command: DSPSYSVAL SYSVAL(QSRLNBR) Your model number can be found using the command: DSPSYSVAL SYSVAL(QMODEL) New customers are now able to test most of the popular software from BVSTools.com without limitation with a temporary registration key. This means instead of limitations and/or nag screens or "friendly reminders" to register, new customers can test software without limitation for a pre-determined period of time. With any software update that you perform, be sure to completely read the version information and notes in the readme.txt file included with the zip file before installing the latest version. Important notes and instructions are included in this file to help make software installations and updates go as smooth as possible. ======================================================= FAQ Snap Shot ------------- - Upgrading or Replacing Your AS/400 and BVSTools.com Software Keys - We just upgraded/replaced our AS/400. What do I need to do to register? Because I do not charge a yearly maintenance/support/upgrade fee, you will need to purchase new registration keys for any software you wish to continue using. If you just purchased your keys recently, contact me and we can work out a possible discount. If your upgrade or replacement machine has a new serial number, please send me the serial number and the model number of the machine no longer in use, and the serial number and model number of the new machine so I can get new registration keys ready for you. See more Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) at https://www.bvstools.com/faq.html. ======================================================= Featured Testimonial -------------------- "We were struggling with untangling the mess of understanding and controlling FTP and writing exit programs to process what we received. FTPTOOL simplified the process 1000%. Easy to install and set up and supported by a software vendor who really cares. Wish all software vendors were as easy to deal with and as supportive!" See more Testimonials at https://www.bvstools.com/testimonials.html ======================================================= Featured Software ----------------- - FTP Tool (FTPTOOL) - The FTPTOOL utility is used to add an extra layer of protection to your AS/400 FTP Server. It also can allow anonymous FTP access as well as logging for incoming FTP sessions. With FTPTOOL you can set up global as well as user level security and logging options. This means that for certain users you can restrict which libraries or directories they can access using FTP, and which FTP commands they can use. FTPTOOL also offers a unique "trigger" feature which allows you to run any command or program on your AS/400 when a certain FTP option is processed. For example, if you want to run a program every time a file is uploaded to a certain directory, you can place a trigger on the FTP PUT option from within FTPTOOL. All of the information availble from the FTP command, such as directory and file name, can be passed to the command or program trigger. For more information on FTPTOOL, feel free to visit https://www.bvstools.com/ftptool.html or contact us directly. Bradley V. Stone www.bvstools.com ------------------------------------------------ If you would no longer wish to recieve a newsletter from BVSTools.com, simply reply to this email with the word REMOVE in the body.