[Info-vax] Real-time new mail notification

[Michael T. Davis]

In article <d0346df1-4669-4864-ba07-046627fbd0f4 at c3g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
FrankS <sapienza at noesys.com> writes:

>On Oct 29, 9:12=A0am, DAV... at ecr6.ohio-state.edu (Michael T. Davis)
>wrote:
>> Even if we could work out a way to notify them via terminal broadcast,
>> since most of them are undergrad. students, they would be hard pressed to
>> understand the concept of a command line, given the popularity of (if not
>> preference for) systems like Gmail. =A0We also don't have the resources t=
>o
>> maintain simultaneous interactive terminal sessions for each and every us=
>er,
>> or even a majority of them.
>>
>
>You started out (in the original post) stating that "long-time" users
>wanted the functionality of VMS mail notifications, which as we know
>required a terminal session.  Now, you're saying that the users are
>undergraduate students, and terminal sessions are no longer in vogue
>for them.  You also say that you couldn't support terminal sessions
>for each user, which has me wondering how your "long-time" users
>managed to get so comfortable with VMS mail in the first place.
>
>Perhaps you see the confusion that we're dealing with on this end of
>your question.
>
	The long-time users who voiced a desire for some form of real-time
notification are primarily faculty, who have been around for decades; the
majority of our users are undergraduates, who are usually out of here somewhere
between three and five years (modulo the occassional student who sticks
around for grad. school, if not longer).

>
>Let me speculate that you are working to eliminate terminal sessions
>for all users, and that access will be via POP or IMAP.  That means
>that users aren't connected to their mailbox for long periods, unlike
>when terminal sessions were connected all day long.  You also point
>out they are setting their polling interval very small in order to get
>near-real-time notification of mail arrival.

	That all sounds about right.

>
>If you don't want them polling too frequently, then the problem
>becomes how do you even know their workstation (or laptop) is even
>available for them to receive a notification?  Coupled with firewall
>issues and outbound traffic to DHCP addresses, I don't think you'll
>find an out-of-the-box solution.  I suspect you will need to roll your
>own, or wait for Process Software to come up with something that will
>work with all your potential client environments (Windows, Linux, Mac,
>and possibly OpenVMS via DECwindows).

	Mr. Stephen "Hoff" Hoffman chimed in privately, indicating it might be
an interesting project.  We exchanged a few messages, but I'm not sure where
we left things.  As you point out, notifying an arbitrary "user station" is
fraught with issues.  We discussed tying into a pre-existing client-side
notification system, like Growl (see http://growl.info), which is at least
available for Mac and Windows.

Regards,
Mike
--
                                         |    Systems Specialist: CBE,MSE
         Michael T. Davis (Mike)         | Departmental Networking/Computing
 http://www.ecr6.ohio-state.edu/~davism/ |     The Ohio State University
                                         |     197 Watts, (614) 292-6928
                   ** E-mail is the best way to contact me **