Agent Commander Notes
Agent Commander 1.1 (Second Release)

Before I go on, I will say that this utility is intended for the more advanced Forte Agent users that require that Agent work on its own when they are not there and have a good working knowledge of the wonderful filters available to all Forte Agent users.

Please understand that I've taken all precautions in making this a safe program to run no matter how poorly it is used. To be able to use this relatively easy program, you need to be experienced in Forte Agent and its filter features. If you do not know how to use filters in Forte Agent and you do a lot of binary downloads you should learn how to use filters. They will make your downloading much easier and reliable. This especially true when using my utility.

This utility was written by me for myself so that I can do unattended downloads of large binary files using the Forte Agent news reader application. After using this little application for several months now without any bugs appearing, I putting it up here for other Forte Agent users that constantly get disconnected by there ISP while downloading large binary posts.

This application is very simple to use and takes up little space on your hard drive. What the application does is it sends Forte Agent one of two commands that you select at a rate that you select.

This is the second version with a couple of additions and a features removed that caused a bug on slower machines.

REMOVED - Commander will not launch Forte Agent if it's not running. On slower machines is can take a long time for the program to appear. If this happens the wrong message is sent and I've received reports of a new email message window appearing instead of marked headers being retrieved. This has been fixed according to a user that had complained about the bug.

REMOVED - The QUIT button has been removed. Now you exit commander by clicking on the close application button in the upper right hand of the Commander window (the little "x" button or press ALT-F4

ADDED - An OPTIONS button has been put in the place of the QUIT button that will invoke the options dialog box.

ADDED - Now Commander will control all of the Forte Agents that are running or jusr one. If you have several copies of Agent running and you want all of them to get the commands, simply open the OPTIONS dialog box and check the box.

ADDED - An ABOUT box So that you can get the version number of this application.

ADDED - The ability to have Commander automatically run on startup and to HIDE when the START button is clicked.

FIXED - Commander will only permit one START command. If you give a second start command without stopping the queue, your command will be ignored. This was not really a bug but I designed the thread to use a couple of global variables that could have behaved in a strange manner.

The commands that can be selected are...

1. "Get Marked Message Bodies"
2. "Get New Headers in Subscribed Groups"

The time intervals available are...

1 minute, 5 minutes, 10minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes
1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, 8 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours

You can have agent send the command.......... "Get New Headers In Subscribed Groups" every "2 Hours" while you are away for the weekend. You would come home to all your message headers already downloaded.

When this command is used and you have any "Mark For Download" filters defined within Forte Agent, all the bodies that match the filter will also be downloaded. I came home from a 6 day trip to find my system still downloading a series of "AVI" files I had defined for retrieval using filters. Over these 6 days, files were marked and retrieved resulting in about 400 megs of files downloaded without me being there.

Of course you need to know how to use Forte Agent's filters to make full use of this option. If you download many large binary files of a certain favorite porn star or even any headers that has the letters ",jpg" in the header, you should teach yourself how to use Forte Agent's filters. They are easy to learn and work well.

If you don't use filters and you just need to make sure all the files you've marked for retrieval get downloaded, you can have Agent Commander send the "Get Marked Message Bodies" command 15 minutes so that if you're disconnected by your ISP, Agent will connect to your provider and proceed with the download. Many times I've let Agent download headers overnight only to find that I was disconnected 1 hour after going to bed and only two of ten bodies retrieved.

This is what prompted me to write this little application which appears to work exactly as I've intended.

USING AGENT COMMANDER

The application file should be put into the same directory that you installed Forte Agent into. This is so that if Forte Agent is not running when a scheduled event occurs, Agent Commander can load the program and issue the command.

The interface is simple. There are four buttons.

1. HIDE - This will hide the Agent Commander window showing only the little Agent Commander system tray icon ib the lower right corner of your screen. If you need to bring the Agent commander window back, simply double click on the little icon in the system tray (the gray box with AC in it)

2. OPTIONS - There are a few options that you can turn off and on with this dialog box. You can have agent send its message to ALL of the running agents you have open or just the first one. You can also have agent automatically start when it is launched. You can also have it automatically hide when the START button is clicked.

3. START - This will start Agent Commander in issuing the commands to Forte Agent. The command will be issued constantly at the rate specified in the dropdown list under the buttons. If you want to stop, press the STOP button.

4. STOP - This will stop Agent Commander from issuing any more commands. To resume, simply press the START button.

There are two radio style buttons that select the command that will be issued by Agent Commander...

And Finally there is a dropdown list so you can tell Agent Commander how long to wait in between each command.

On the left side there is a window that keeps a log of all commands given and the time they were given.

If the application is hidden with the hide button you can give the STOP/START, OPTIONS, QUIT, SHOW/HIDE commands via right clicking on the Agent Commander icon in the system tray. This will bring up a menu with these commands.

If the start command has been invoked, you will see an animation in the system tray with the Agent Commander icon turning from yellow to green. If the stop command has been given, the icon stays a constant red.

NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR:

1. Make sure Forte Agent is properly set up to dial your ISP when it needs to go online. If it is not, this utility will not work since it relies on Forte Agent to open the connection.

2. This works under WinNT and Win98 3. This has been tested with Agent 1.7 and 1,8 only. 4. This is freeware written by me for all who need it.

5. You may run several instances of Agent commander at the same time so that you can issue both commands to Forte Agent. In the future this will not be needed after I design the application to deliver both commands at different intervals.

6. If you have any suggestions my email address is acommand25@yahoo.com

Enjoy!!!!!