TRANSFER Installation and Management Guide

System Administration—Agent Considerations
Managing a TRANSFER System
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System
Administration
Administrative functions are generally performed through the ADMIN application,
which is described in Volume 1 of the TRANSFER Administration Guide, the Reference
Manual. Section 9 of this manual, “Using ADMIN to Administer TRANSFER,”
explains using ADMIN for system control and depot statistics. TRANSFER
applications can also perform administrative functions through requests to the
TRANSFER interactive server (TISERV). The interface to the TRANSFER interactive
server is described in the TRANSFER Reference Manual.
The ADMIN application lets you provide your own SCREEN COBOL modules for
three administrative functions. These modules are invoked by ADMIN in response to
specific function requests from the MAIN MENU or the AGENT SELECTION screen.
These user-supplied extensions, which are in addition to the functions supplied with
ADMIN, provide screen displays and maintenance for the following:
Agent configurations
An additional depot profile
Additional system-control parameters
The user extensions must be stored in the user-supplied SCREEN COBOL library used
for the ADMIN program, specified in Base TRANSFER in the DEFINETR file
described in Section 5, “Defining a TRANSFER System.”
Agent Considerations As a system manager, you are concerned with the overall implementation of agents for
your TRANSFER system.
Tandem supplies two agents with its ADMIN application.
The vacation agent handles messages for a correspondent who is away from the
terminal for an extended period of time.
The print-on-delivery agent automatically sends incoming packages to a specified
printer.
You can, in addition, develop your own agents to perform a wide variety of functions,
such as:
Notifying a correspondent when packages are received
Filing incoming packages in specific folders
Arranging related incoming packages in special sequences
Forwarding incoming packages to another correspondent
Supporting the interface between a Tandem network and another computer
network
Replying automatically to the senders of incoming packages
The TRANSFER Programming Guide contains detailed information on designing and
writing agents.