TARGET Revision 18.1

February 2004


Welcome to year EIGHTEEN of the TARGET system. Hard to imagine, isn't it? Anyway, here are the changes for release 18.1:

1. The e-mail sending system has been completely reworked. There were too many of you having problems with ISPs who wouldn't reliably take your e-mail; if you also had a dynamic IP address we had a hard time taking it instead. The new system is integrated into the faxing software and sends *all* TARGET e-mail via one of our servers using a dedicated protocol. This also means that e-mails are enqueued quickly then sent later so that large bulk e-mails don't take forever to send.

2. This release also supports multiple pictures for a given item. The additional pictures should be named (for machine 1234) 1234a.jpg, 1234b.jpg, and so on.

3. A new control variable QPICTS controls how multiple pictures behave by default when sending quotes and spec sheets by e-mail.

M     Default all pictures, pdf, mpeg to Y (send them)
L     Produce link to item on website in quote. Default all but first picture to N
B     Produce link and default all to Y
N     No link, only first picture gets Y

Note that you can always override the picture flags but the production of the link within the quote (or spec) body is based only on the setting of the control variable. The default value for QPICTS is L which is the recommended value.

4. A new control variable WEBREF gives the URL reference to be used for the embedded link to the item in the quote (spec). The default for this is "uen.hsix.com" which will work for all users. Those of you who have websites hosted at HSI may change this link to include your domain name (eg; "inv.xyz.com"). Don't just put anything here; this works only if the first part of the name is "inv" and if we host your site.

5. A new label format has been added. Format 5 is Avery 5160, 1" x 2-5/8" 3-across, 30 per page. This can be used only for domestic and may result in cutting off some long names, but they are very handy for postcard mailings.

6. You may now email specs from the sales F12 menu. These will have pictures attached per the control variable above.

7. All places you can specify an attached file with an email (letters and bulk mwrite documents) now allow longer names; the THEOS limit of 8.3 filename format still applies, but you may now specify a name like jpg/1960a.jpg to include a file from a sub-directory. There is a new directory created on your THEOS system called ATTACH where you can put files moved from your Windows system to be attached to emails. To specify a file here, give the whole path (eg; attach/sample.doc).

8. The new email system has a (temporary) limit of 5-10 thousand active emails at a time. We are hoping to remove this limit soon but this should not be a short-term problem since "active" means enqueued but not sent and most emails are sent within a few seconds.

9. You may now send emails in html format from TARGET. Make a document in mwrite as usual. The first line of the document must be exactly "<html>". The TARGET email sender will recognize this and send the document in html format instead of as text. If you would like us to help you set up some email documents in this format, just ask.

10. Letter maintenance now automatically ads the recipient's name and company at the top of emailed notes. This is to aid in dealing with bounce messages or replies from people who don't have sensible signature files.

11. The Price List from sales F12 functions can now be emailed. We're working on making all three of those reports emailable.

Return to TARGET News | Return to HSI Home | View Past Release Notes