Messaging and Directory Server software used around the world in the Government, Military, Aviation and Commercial sectors.
Auto-actions are a feature of the service provided by an X.400 Message Store to clients through the P7 protocol. Isode release 11.2 and onwards added a range of management features around auto-actions to enable Isode customers to make effective use of this feature.
Auto Action Management
Clients can create and manage auto-actions through the P7 protocol (using the RegisterMS operation). Each auto-action has an associated filter, which can match all messages or selected messages based on a large number envelope parameters (e.g., message size, priority, or originator) or on header parameters (e.g. subject).
When a message is delivered into the store, it is matched against the filter for each registered auto action, and all matching auto-actions are applied to the message.
M-Store Supports three auto-actions:
Auto-forward
The auto-forward action forwards a delivered message to one or more recipients specified in the auto-action, and marks the message as auto-forwarded (an X.400 feature). It may be set to include a cover note. There is an option in auto-forward to delete the message after it is auto-forwarded. Auto-forwarding is useful to ensure that messages get processed when a user is away for a period. It can also be helpful to distribute messages to multiple recipients (essentially an alternate approach to using distribution lists), which allows more user control. This will be desirable for some AMHS users, as this model reflects the way that a lot of AFTN systems operate.
Auto-Actions setup: Click for larger image
Delayed auto-forward
A variant of auto-forward, which was defined for the US Defense Messaging System, is to perform the auto-forward in the event that the message has not been fetched from the message store after a defined period (i.e., has not been read by the intended recipient). This mechanism can be used to help ensure that messages get read promptly. The filter mechanism can be useful here, for example to have a shorter auto-forward delay for urgent messages.
Auto-alert
Most P7 operations are client initiated, and normal P7 operation is for the client to poll the server at intervals to check for new messages. The auto-alert auto-action causes an alert operation to be sent from the server to the client, which provides information on a newly arrived message. Use of auto-alert allows a client to get new messages more quickly, and improve efficiency by reducing the frequency of polling the store.
The first changes we've made in support of auto-actions is to the P7 support in our X.400 Client API product. We've added in the RegisterMS operation, so that users of the API can register auto-actions. We've also changed how the X400msWait operation works, so that it will return when an alert operation comes in, and so that the polling frequency can be specified by the API user. This enables an API user to take advantage of the auto-alert capabilities.
End-user and Administrator management
The auto-action protocol support is designed for the client (end user) to manage auto-actions. This is very useful, but in many situations it is also useful to configure and manage auto-actions centrally. This is particularly true where sophisticated use is made of the capability, and for more formal messaging structures where the configuration and flow is centrally managed. Isode has extended its management console to provide GUI management of autoactions, including sophisticated setup of filters. This will enable an operator to view and modify setup for each user.
A related management feature enables the manager to forward a message from any mailbox (including a cover note). This is in support of our reliable message transport strategy and complements the capability to monitor mailboxes, and in particular to monitor messages that have not been fetched (i.e., not read by the intended recipient).
