21st Century I.T. Solutions

Davrom Consulting Pty Ltd Established Since 2001 PO Box 1644, Sunnybank Hills, Qld, 4109 Phone/Fax: +61-7-32720267 ABN: 81 096 990 804

The following article was written by David.M.Clark for OpenComputing (formerly UNIXWorld) Magazine.

Mail-It is a Microsoft Windows based interface providing access to the UNIX mail system.

This multi-functional software product was written by UniPalm Limited in the United Kingdom and has been developed to provide a simple to install, simple to use method of accessing UNIX based mail.

Mail-It allows the user to have the power of the multi-channelling capabilities of UNIX mail systems (MMDF and Sendmail) without having to go through extensive PC configuration.

Mail-It uses the TCP/IP protocol to communicate with UNIX hosts. Version 1.13 supports LAN WorkPlace for DOS, PC/NFS and PC/TCP. There is also allowance for additional transport drivers.

The latest release of Mail-It, version 2.01, supports any WinSock compatible protocol such as Workgroups for Windows TCP/IP transport.

The UNIX servers use SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) for TCP/IP network mail routing but may also require the relevant POP Daemon to procure a connection with the Mail-It PC. POP2 and POP3 daemons, if required, are supplied with the Mail-It package for SCO, HP-UX, NCR, SVR4. Source code is provided for further tuning and compilation of the UNIX daemons should the need arise. To verify if your UNIX system has the POP and SMTP services configured for use, examine the /etc/services file and look for lines similar to the following:

smtp		25/tcp		mail
pop-2		109/tcp		postoffice

In addition to the networked versions of Mail-It there are also serial/modem versions available that allow 'remote' access using UUCP (UNIX-to-UNIX-CoPy).

To install Mail-It your PC must be running Windows 3.1 or higher with three megabytes of available disk space and at least four megabytes of RAM.

The actual installation process is quite simple as it uses the standard MS Windows method of installation by executing setup.exe on the first floppy disk. By following the installation sections in the manual, your PC is setup and ready to run within minutes.

You must supply a user name and password for user authentication. You will also need to indicate where you want to store your mail recipient address book as well as a location for the actual storing or your messages. Mail messages are actually stored on the PC.

The Control Panel in Windows will have a Mail-It Subsystem icon created which is used to further configure the setup.

You will need to configure your mail transport send and receive options to suit your LAN/WAN environment. These are covered in the Appendix of the Mail-It manual.

Mail-It has a well documented, easy to follow manual which contains plenty of illustrated screen examples. Again the focus here is on simplicity but without detracting from versatility.

Mail-It contains all of the standard mail options you would expect from a mail interface. There is the usual Send screen options such as CC-ing and Attaching files. The receiving side of Mail-It allows you to respond to the sender and/or all others CC-ed parties indicated in the mail item. It also includes the option to send a copy of the original mail message being 'replies' to.

Mail-It has simple to manipulate mail folders for categorising mail into related topics.

The address book is well organised and allows you to map cryptic email address names to "Fistname Lastname" entries for easy identification.

There is the ability to design your own mail forms where the input of information is of a specific nature and could become somewhat repetitive, for example, phone message. Forms are simple to create and retrieve for use.

Mail-It allows the user to setup their own 'signature' file which is appended to each out-going email. This has become a common practice where mail is sent to the outside world or across WANs where users are not necessarily aware of who they are really communicating.

Mail-It comes complete with advisory icons that let you know when new mail has been received as well as displaying out-going envelope icons when sending mail. Icons can be set to animated and the PC will beep when mail arrives.

Mail-It 2.01 supports MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) which allows you to send practically any type of file and MAPI (Microsoft's Messaging Application Programming Interface) which allows you to 'attach' and send bitmaps, spreadsheets and documents created in Microsoft packages. Microsoft applications that support mailing of their work contents can be sent easily by using the Mail pull-down menus. This means that Mail-It can sit nicely within an existing Microsoft Windows based installation. Standard drop and drag of information is fully supported.

Initially Mail-It would has proven very effective where UNIX servers were accessed by dumb terminal users and DOS LAN users who needed to have a common email communication path with each other.

While this case still stands the wider view of being able to implement PC's running Mail-It in any UNIX based LAN/WAN is obvious from its flexibility to interoperate with Windows applications, sharing and passing mail information between users irrespective of their mail interface.

Mail-It is based on industry mail protocol standards and therefore would be suitable in all cases ranging from the small office with a few networked PCs to a WAN with multiple departments and distributed UNIX servers.

Compared to other products in its range it conforms to the SMTP standard without the requirement of expensive SMTP gateways to facilitate cross-platform communication.

With Mail-It the user has email connectivity to the outside world at their desktop.

Suppliersof Mail-It: