Copyright: ® Significa Software Inc.


Help Contents
Contents

Notices

Purpose

Credits

Alpha-Pager Version 1.0

General Description

Using Alpha-Pager

Events

Description of Event

Communications

Automatically Setting Properties

The Setting Dialog Box

Properties

Description of Properties


Purpose

Why Use Alpha Paging

Licensing

Network Licensing

Ownership of Information


Why Use Alpha Paging

This product was designed to allow developers to provide low cost automated communications from within their windows based applications to anyone carrying a modern Alpha-Numeric Pager. The need for this type of tool became apparent when we developed a help desk application and had a difficult time in communicating with mobile service personnel, this solution has provided exactly the feature that was needed and proved to be very valuable. The paging feature of that application has become one of the most highly used items available to the help desk operators.


Licensing

This is a development product licensed to an individual PC with Visual Basic installed on it. This version also supplies the run-time version through licensing files that may be distributed with your completed application. You may NOT distribute the developer license file under any circumstances, doing so would constitute a breach of the licensing agreement.


Network Licensing

The Network version of  this control may be purchased from Significa Software at a minimal charge allowing multiple developers to use it concurrently.


Ownership of Information

The access telephone numbers of various pager services are the exclusive property of those respective services and may not be distributed in a completed application without prior written permission from said services, Significa Software accepts no responsibility for damages to any service caused by a developer illegally distributing their information.


Credits

Copyright 1995 Significa Software Inc. All Rights reserved

Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

Visual Basic is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

Mccaw is a registered trademark of Mccaw Cellular communications.

AirTouch is a registered trademark of Air-touch Paging.

Design and implementation	Robert MacKay and David Peterson

Documentation	Robert MacKay

Programming	Robert MacKay

Quality Assurance	David Peterson

Paging Service Tech Support	Mccaw Messaging

Beta Testing	Ryatt Summers

Related Topics:

How to Receive tech support


How to Receive tech support

If you need technical assitance please call

1-801-580-0653

and we will be happy to help you.

Currently help can be received via email on compuserve by addressing any requests to address 71163,735, responses on Compuserve will require 24 hours to be processed.

or send snail mail to:

Significa Software

6964 South FireFox Ct.

West Jordan, Ut 84084

We are fully commited to providing solutions to any bug, problem or requested feature as fast as we possible can, If Alpha-Pager does not do something you want it to or does do something you don't want it to please let us know and we will attempt to make changes as fast as is safely possible.


General Description

Alpha-Paging VBX will send a sentence or two to anyone in the world from within your own Visual Basic application. You can send a message to a business associate at the touch of a button - "Bob, call me when you reach the airport 262-5081 - Lisa". Or, automatically remind yourself of an engagement - "Pick up kids from Sam & Louis's - 4:00".

Let's face it, alpha-numeric pagers are becoming more popular than cellular phones. It's because they're cheaper to own & use. New digital cellular phones are coming with paging built-in!

If your personal productivity software doesn't support paging - you'll be out in the cold.

Our alpha-paging control is as easy to program and use as it gets. Just install the VBX in your Windows directory and add it to your Visual Basic project. Then you'll be in control!

Alpha-Paging VBX supports a wide range of modems and paging services. Simply set the phone number property, message property, and action property, and slick as a whistle, out goes your message.


Using Alpha-Pager

Visual Basic and Alpha-Pager

Alpha-Pager was developed by Visual Basic programmers who also happen to do a few other things, so we have an intimate knowledge of how Visual Basic works and the types of features that a VBX should support. We have attempted to provide as much functionality and easy of use for the developer as possible.

Alpha-Pager will run in the background when running from Visual Basic so there is no need to wait for the page to be completed. Just set the action to 1 and go on with your application, the event driven environment of windows allows us to not take control of the application when performing a paging operation.

The next release will include the ability to perform multiple pages from a single communications session, instead of the current model which only sends one page per session.

Since windows strings are limited only by the amount of free memory available to the application, your page message lengths are limited to the size supported by the paging service. Most services support 80 characters, but many will support 128.


Description of Event

CommStatus Event

The CommStatus event is used to receive status messages from Alpha-Pager stating  the current step or state of the message communications process. It is intended to allow the updating of a status line or control to provide the user with information as to the success or failure of the process.

There are several levels of messages returned from Alpha-Pager. These include Open messages which are fairly explanatory and occur when opening a port, and communication error messages which are fairly explanatory also. Communications messages may appear more often than the open errors because they can occur at any stage in the communications process.

Many messages are for programmers to see and decide whether the message should  be passed on to the end user. If a recurrent message is undesired use the Instr() function to look for the message and change what gets displayed to the user.  You could also build a SELECT CASE block that would look for each message and put your own message in the label for any message you didn't like.

An example of how to implement the status event is given in the sample application provided with the control. The following is also a short example that assumes the existence of a Label Control named Status to received the text.

Sub Pager1_CommStatus ()

    Status.Caption = "Status: " + Pager1.ErrorMsg

End Sub

The messages returned from Alpha-Pager are listed below:

VB Property access error

This message represents a major functional failure in the control and indicates that the memory space of the control has been corrupted possibly by another control or another application. Try testing the control in a new application with no other apps running in the background.

No Carrier

This is a typical Communications message indicating that the carrier signal on the modem has been dropped, can be caused by slow response from the modem

Busy

This message indicates that a busy signal has been returned to the modem, try redialing again later.

Connection Failed

This message says that the modem was either not found at the specified port, was unable to be initialized or that is was unrecognized by Alpha-Pager.

Connected to Modem

This message says that the modem has been found at the specified port and that dialing will start in a moment.

Connection Established

This message indicates that the modem has dialed and received the connect signal from the modem at the other end. Id initialization will commence in a few moments.

Id Established

This message indicates that the paging service computer has acknowledged the request for automatic paging service and has recognized your id as valid.

Attention established

This message indicates that the paging service has sent back the signal stating that the message is ready to be received and that it should be sent immediately.

Port Close Successful

This message indicates that the com port specified has been closed successfully.

Disconnecting from service

This message indicates that the paging service hung up the phone and that the message is completed


Automatically Setting Properties

Paging Service Properties

When a paging service location is selected from the list box in Alpha-Pager per the example program the settings for baud, stopbits, databits and parity are automatically input to the properties. These values are stored in a file that has the name defined by the ServiceName property in the properties box without an extension.  It is best if the file is in the applications directory but will work elsewhere by putting the path in the control property.  The service file always has the extension PDB and should NOT contain an extension in the property.

It currently defualts to PAGER.PDB in the current directory.

You can edit the PAGER.PDB file to contain your own service information, the format of the line layout is as follows:

UT-Salt Lake City,15551234567,2400,"E,7,1",230

where up to the first comma is the name of the location 	UT-Salt Lake City

Next is the ServiceModem Number	15551234567

Next is the baud rate of the modem at the service	2400

Next are the parameters for communicatoins (in quotes)	"E,7,1"

and finally is the maximum size of the message string accepted  230

Due to legal restrictions we are unable to distribute all access numbers with our product, we have included the ones we can. It is highly recommended that you either call your local Paging service Company to get the service access number or if this is for distribution have a disclaimer like this one that asks the user to call the paging service company. In the sample program is source code for an editor to allow you to make modifications to this file from Visual basic. Please feel free to use this sample in your applications.

It is highly recommended that you keep the default file name and just make additions to the file as needed to support various areas.

Most Alpha-pagers have a number listed on the back for contacting the service provider directly.


The Setting Dialog Box

Setting Properties with the Comm Settings Box

The Communicatoins Setings Dialog can be called by setting the Action Property to 3, when the user selects the Ok button in the dialog the comm properties are set to the values in the dialog box. Comm Properties are unchanged if the Cancel button is selected. The Dialog is designed as closely to a standard box as possible.


Description of Properties

Action

BaudRate

CommPort

DataBits

ErrorMsg

ModemInit

ModemName

Parity

PagerMessage

PagerNumber

ServiceNumber

ServiceName

ServiceLocation

StopBits


Action

The Action Property is used to perform various functions of Alpha-Pager as listed below

0	Performs no action. Inactive State

1	Send Page, will cancel if any necessary information is invalid or missing, such as ServiceNumber, PagerNumber, PagerMessage.

2	Disconnect from service and hang up modem.

3	Calls Comm Settings box and then sets parameters when OK is chosen in the dialog box.

4.	Display About Box.

Action will set itself back to 0 after every action is complete. This property is not available at design time.


BaudRate

The baud rate specifies the speed with which the Paging Services Modem will communicate with your modem, both speed ratings must match.

The available speeds are:

0 - 300 	baud

1 - 1200 	baud

2 - 2400 	baud

3 - 9600 	baud

4 - 14400 	baud

When setting the baud rate you must specify the numeric identifier NOT the actual baud rate you want to use.


CommPort

Specifies the Communications port that the Modem is attached to on your computer, values range from 1 to 4


DataBits

Specifies the number of  databits used by the modem, values are 5,7 or 8

Can be automatically changed when the Parity Property is modified.


ErrorMsg

This is read-only at run-time and not available at design time it is filled with status information about the current or previous communications session.


ModemInit

The Initialization string for the modem is loaded with the ModemName from a file called MODEMS.DAT


ModemName

Allows the programmer to select the modem type to be used by the application. List box is dynamically filled from an accompanying text file called MODEMS.DAT


Parity

Specifies the type of parity used by the modem to communicate with the Pager Service.

The available values are:

0 - NOPARITY

1 - ODDPARITY

2 - EVENPARITY

3 - MARKPARITY

4 - SPACEPARITY

When EVENPARITY is selected either in the property window or in code the databits are changed to 7 Databits automatically and any other choice here will set the databits to 8.


PagerMessage

This property is the text message that will be sent to the paging service and will appear in the Message window of the specified pager. Each service location has a predefined maximum length of message that can be received this version does not insure that this maximum is not exceeded, therefore the page may fail if the message is to long or it may be truncated after being received. Check with your service provider to get the exact allowed length. Future versions will control this field and prevent overruns from occurring.

This is required by the paging Service.


PagerNumber

This property is the phone number that identifies the pager, usually written on the pager somewhere, this specifies which pager to send the message to.

This is required by the paging service.


ServiceNumber

This property specifies the phone number where the paging service has a modem connected for receiving alpha-pages and should include any pre-fix or post-fix numbers necessary to dial your modem

Example:	9,5551212

The 9, on the beginning of the number is used by many phone systems to open an outside line and get a dial-tone.


ServiceName

This property defines a name for the paging service being used, currently it is set to PAGER to signify that the service information service connect information. Full versions are available for other services as well.


ServiceLocation

This property specifies the geographical location of the service connection you wish to use. This property will allow the Databits, Stopbits and Parity properties to be set automatically based on the parameters of the location specified.


StopBits

This Property works in conjunction with the databits and parity properties to define the communication parameters being used to send to the paging service.

The available values are:

0 - 1 STOPBIT

1 - 1.5 STOPBITS

2 - 2 STOPBITS


Glossary of Terms

ModemName

ModemInit

ErrorMsg

PagerMessage

PagerNumber

ServiceNumber

ServiceName

ServiceLocation


ModemName

This property is used to display the name of the selected modem.


ModemInit

This is the property that contains the modem initialization string to be sent to the modem each time a page is sent. Automatically filled by Alpha-Pager from the Modems.dat file


ErrorMsg

This is the status message property used by Alpha-Pager to return values through the CommStatus Event procedure


PagerMessage

This is the Alpha-Numeric information that you want to be sent to the Pager through the paging service Modem


PagerNumber

This is the Telephone number listed on the back of the Pager itself and is the unique identifier of the specific pager unit.


ServiceNumber

The Telephone number that dials the paging services modem and allows you to connect and download messages. These numbers can be obtained directly from the paging services themselves


ServiceName

The company name of the service being used ( only used for file name reference)


ServiceLocation

The information that defines where a Paging Service is located and their modem access information