The Post Message dialog is an interface into AutoTroll's built-in mailer. There are several places in AT's interface that will allow you to select players or games and then send them a message. When you do this, the 'To:' field will be filled in once the message is sent and the rest of the message will be opened for you to edit. Once you click 'send' AT cycles through each game or player you've selected, then scanns the subject and message body for template variables and fills them in. If you have any attachments, AT will zip the attachments if the current player wants zipfiles and encode the attachments based on the player's preferences. The message will then be saved to disk and will be sent over the internet.
Insert Text File
Click this to insert text from a file into the message body. This can also be an AutoTroll template file like player config settings.
Save Message. This will save the message body (not any of the headers) into a file. This might be useful if you've created a standard message (with or without template variables) that you think you'll frequently send to players. You can save this text file anywhere you want then later use the "Insert Text File" to load it up.
Send Message
Click this to send the message.
Attachment Button
Click this to add a file attachment. The files added will be added to each message sent (if you've selected multiple recipients). You can also right click in the attachment window (at the bottom) and a pop-up menu will come up.
Message Type
There are three "types" of messages:
1. Forced Message - this sends to the player(s) no matter what
2. New Game Message - sends to selected players only if they have chosen to receive new game messages.
3. News/Broadcast Message - sends to selected players only if they have chosen to receive broadcast messages.
Abort Message
This will cancel your message. You will lose all information.
To: Field
This field will be filled in by AutoTroll. If you access this from the main dialog, you can select :
< All Players >
which will send the message to all players in your database
< Players in a Game >
which will send a message to any player in an active/running game. This is a little different than going to the games page, selecting all your running games and then posting a message, because in that instance if a player is in 2 games, he'll receive 2 messages. You'll also have access to the [Game.*] and [Race.*] variables. This option sends just one message to the player and only the [Player.*] template variables are valid.
< Active Players >
which will send the message to all players considered active.
< Inactive Players >
which will send the message to all players considered inactive.
Reply-To: Field
This field is probably only meaningful when AutoTroll has an exclusive mailbox. If you're sending a player a message, then by default the reply-to field with be that of the host's e-mail. But, if AutoTroll has its own mailbox and you don't usually check its mail, you could miss an important message if one of the players hits the 'reply' button. This reply-to field allows you to specify where the message will go when a player clicks 'reply'. Note: if sending a player their RST file, you should probably leave the Reply-To field as the host's e-mail so they can click reply and send in their TRN.
CC: Field
This is like any other mailer's CC field. The message will be sent to all those you've selected as well as carbon-copied (CC)'d to any addresses you specify here. You can specify multiple address by separating them with a semi-colon
For example:
"Red Troll <red.troll@sharenet.com>; black.troll@sharenet.com; <ob1@starwars.com> "
will send to the player as well as CC the message to the above 3 people.
Note: If you've selected multiple people to send your message to and you put an address in the CC field, then every message sent will have this CC field. So, if you send a message to 11 players in a game and put yourself in the CC field, you'll get a 11 e-mail messages. If you've used template variables in the message the 11 messages will look slighly different.
Subject: Field
This will be the subject of your message. You can put template variables in here too. For example, if you're sending the message to several games you can put [Game.Name] in the subject line and this will be replaced for each game.
Message Body
Type your message text here. You can use template variables if you wish.
Attachment List (bottom window)
This lists all attachments going to the player(s). You can add or remove attachments by putting your mouse over the list and right clicking. A popup menu will appear and allow you to add/remove files. Note: be sure not to send an RST to all players in a game, any file listed will be sent to all players. If you want to send RSTs to all players, click the RST button for the game(s).
Notice in the example above I've used template variables. Template variables are supported in both the subject and message body.
