One of the first things to do is to define some settings and add details for email, instant messaging and SMS that your users will send requests to and receive query results back from.
Click the settings button at the top left of the screen
Note: We'll use the word base (as in base email address, base IM address, base SMS number) for addresses end-users send queries to.
Message Separator
The message separator option lets you choose how each argument of a query will be separated. For simplicity you could choose a space or maybe it's easier to separate your data by commas.
Go to the Message separator screen and select how you will separate user inputs for query requests.
eg. [user input 1],[user input 2],....,[user input n] or [user input 1];[user input 2];....;[user input n] etc
This can be changed at any time.
Next, we will setup email and optionally, instant messaging and SMS.
Email Settings
Click email, then Add Email Address Settings and enter the details of the IMAP settings for the base email address to be used by end-users to send queries to.
You can setup multiple email addresses for each query you plan to use, or just setup one email address for all queries and use a keyword at the beginning of each query to distinguish between them. Additional email addresses can be created at anytime.
Email Address: The email address used to send queries to by the end user
SMTP Host: The outgoing email setting
IMAP Host: The incoming email setting
Username: The username for this email address
Password: The password for this email address
Port: Enter a port number if different from the default
SSL: Tick the SSL box if ssl is to be used
Like below, use your own company email address details. We've used a dummy email address for illustration purposes.
Click the Save button, you will get a message that the save was successful and to restart the MDN Mail Service so it will pick up the new email account. The new email address is added to the tree on the left.
!! Important Note: Each time you add a new email address or change an existing email address setting, you'll need to restart MDN Mail Service so it picks up the new settings. See Running MDN Services about how to do this and for more information.
Next, navigate to Instant Messenger and click Add IM connection
Instant messaging settings
Enter the details of the instant messenger you will use.
IM Name: This is the name the end users will receive query replies from. eg. MDN Server
IM ID: This is the IM username or screen name.
IM password: The password for this ID
IM Provider: Select from Yahoo!, MSN, Jabber, AIM, Google Talk, ICQ
Only one IM Connection can be created for each IM provider, so later when setting up queries, a keyword will need to be created for each query to separate the queries.
After you enter the end users' IM names, this base IM name will be shown as a friend in their IM list when it is connected.
!! Important Note: Each time you add a new IM address or change an existing IM address setting, you'll need to restart MDN IM Server so it picks up the new settings. See Running MDN Services about how to do this and for more information.
If you want to add SMS text messaging support, navigate to SMS Text Messaging, then click SMS Settings
SMS settings
Enter the details of your SMS modem similar to below. See Supported SMS Modems for more information on how to find out which COM port to use.
Note: You must enter the COM settings like below. eg. COM1, COM2, COM8 etc
Note: Some SMS modems don't work for sending SMS with a fast baud setting, so a setting of 9600 is adequate. Save the information.
!! Important Note: When you add a new modem or change the modem's settings, you'll need to restart MDN SMS Server so it picks up the new settings. See Running MDN Services about how to do this and for more information.