Digital Workshop

Hi

I'm working on a project that includes sending viewer data as text file attachments using the launch e-mail action.

This works well when the viewer has an e-mail program like Outlook that the launch e-mail action seems to automatically find, open and attach the specified files. However, it doesn't seem to work when the viewer doesn't have a default e-mail program set up, but rather depnds on a web mail program to send e-mail.

Is there any work-a-round for web mail users to get the correct text files attached and sent through their web mail program with the least amount of user effort/configuring? Not familiar with web mail, is there any way to script a path to launch it (and set up the file attachment and e-mail launch) through their most likely browser, IE?

I suspect this is not possible, but I'm hoping someone has a work-a-round.

Any ideas would be welcome.

Kind Regards,

Stephen

The email action relies on having a MAPI compliant mail client installed - web mail is not capable of being MAPI complaint, I'm afraid.

MAPI is Microsoft's standardised interface for mail and is the only way most programs can send mail (unless the program includes it's own mail client, which is not very practical!)

Could your users just FTP the attachments and then whomever could pull them from a FTP site?

Thanks for your replies.

It looks like I can't uniformly use the launch e-mail action with file attachments, since some users are likely to have webmail as their primary e-mail program. I'll try a few experiments to see if there is another way to receive the encrypted data, automated so that the user has little or no effort.

Thanks again.

Kind Regards,
Stephen

Hi Brian (bwpatric)

Thanks for your idea about FTP. While I have a basic sense of what FTP is, I'm unsure specifically how I could set something up so that end-users of the publication could send me the completed text data files.

Anything that I would set up would need to be mostly automated for the user, so that it would be simple, user-friendly for them. The other issue would be cost, since this project is done on a "shoestring," in terms of budget.

Could you be more specific about what would be needed and how FTP could be set up so the users could send me their data via the encrypted text files created in the pub?

Thanks for your help.

Kind Regards,
Stephen

Hi Brian

I think I've figured out the FTP option, which seems quite helpful. Thanks!

My next challenge is to figure out how to vary/change text file names in the publication, so that multiple users using FTP upload of these data storage files, currently all with the same set of names, can store these separately. If not, each time a new user uploads for example, text4, it will overwrite another text4 uploaded by a different user.

So, I need a mechanism in the pub for each user to have the text files created, prior an FTP upload, to have unique names. Otherwise, each pub would have to create and save separately named files-a separate pub for every user and a serial number to connect a particular series of files to that user-possible, but not helpful for mass production, etc.

Any ideas?

Kind Regards,
Stephen

Do you have your users logging in with some type of login name or student name, because then you could write/save the text files they create with their name and then when they upload via FTP, the text file would be student1.txt, student2.txt, etc.

Sorry I can't be more helpful by providing examples, but I'm kind of on a time crunch on another project at present.

Hi Brian (bwpatric)

Thanks for your reply.

Oddly, the form on my site with file upload that I created in FrontPage 2003 doesn't have any sign in. That may be due to involving the web hosting support staff and using a separate FTP account just for uploading to this folder on my site.

So, I can look into a sign-in, but this may be neither possible nor practical given plans for pub distribution.

I'll try to think of another way (with as little end-user effort as possible) to save the multiple text files they first create in the pub, with a unique name each. I'm using write to disk actions to save data in a number of text files. The action writes to text1, text2, text3 and so forth--always the same name in the pub. So when these are FTP uploaded to a website folder (or any number of folders), they will overwrite any existing ones from other users.

Now if I could figure out how to collect/save to a variable labeled "name," a user name for each pub, that can then be made part of the text file name (johndoetextfile1, etc.) then I would be "home free."

In any event, I'm hopeful that another of our Forum colleagues or the DW team can suggest some work-a-round.

Good luck with your project!

Thanks again.

Stephen

Hi

Sorry for replying to my own posts. I finally figured out the last challenge:

(1) capture a username on the first page and save to variable "username."

(2) Paste it into the write to disk action pathway as <username>\<username>text1.txt, and it will create a folder and text file both individualized to the user. This identifies the data file upon upload.

Problem solved!

My appreciation to Forum colleagues and the DW team for their very helpful leads along the way.

Kind Regards,
Stephen