Using Windows programs with HCA

SUMMARY

The Visual Programmer Run element is used to start a Windows program.  This technical note discusses a good use for it.

rather then build into HCA ways to send email, faxes, pages, etc, we opted to provide a way to start a Windows program and pass parameters to it.  In this way, you can choose the programs that support the types of things you want to do.

One important note!  The Windows programs that are discussed in this technical note are shareware programs.  We didn't write them, so we don't support them. Use them at your own risk. They seem to work fine for us, but your mileage may vary.  Use caution!

Sending email from a HCA program

A great use for using a Windows program in conjunction with a HCA program is to send email.  Several shareware programs are available for this.  The one we use is called MailSend and is available from: http://www.radiks.net/~jimbo/share.html.

This program comes with lots of documentation but here is a brief tutorial.

The first step is to create a configuration file that contains all the pieces of your message that remain the same. This is the contents of the file I created called mailinfo.cfg

-from me@Test.com
-smtp mailhost.worldnet.att.net

The next step is to create the HCA program that you want to send mail.  Use a Run Program element with these parameters:

The command line provides the other parts of the message not supplied in the configuration file.  The @mailinfo.cfg identifies the configuration file, the -to provides the message recipient, the -s is the mail subject, and the -msg is the message text.

Depending upon your internet connection, MailSend may use Dial-Up Networking to establish an internet connection.