                              Intellicomm
                              -----------
By Joachim Meyn
Hexenkessel BBS
Walldorf, Germany
+49-6227-30230


Intellicomm is a hardly known but nevertheless excellent
communications/terminal program. Although manual handling
is possible and quite simple Intellicomm obviously is
designed to automate all tasks for users of BBS'.

There do exist a large number of terminal programs featuring
more or less advanced script languages to allow automation,
there even exist special programs like Robocomm. Intellicomm
utilizes a slightly different approach.

With Intellicomm you create BBS Information Files hereafter
called BIF. For the most common BBS programs basic BIFs come
with the archiv.

In the BIF of a certain BBS you call you enter some basic
information like:

- the name you use on this BBS
- the password (can be saved encrypted)
- the prompts and the answer you wish to give to the prompts
  (for many BBS programs there come standardized BIFs with
  the archiv containing the default prompts for the BBS and
  the related mail door)
- unique lines of text by which Intellicomm can see where it
  is

This will take a couple of minutes only. Once you have under-
stood how it works (see one of the BIFs coming with the archive)
you will need less than 15 minutes to create a BIF from scrap.

You can now already run Intellicomm semi automatic, ie. tell
Intellicomm to call one or several BBSs and take you to the
main menu there.

To go a step further you can also enter all the prompts you
need for up- or downloading mail and files, access the time
bank etc. If you have done this, really a matter of minutes
only, you are ready to fully automate. You can now create jobs
to be done and run these jobs from the command line or have
them executed at certain times etc.


Take me as an example. I created BIFs for all BBSs I call.
I then created a job called MAILRUN, telling Intellicomm in
this job to

1. Call the Lobster Buoy
2. Upload and download mail via TriHub
3. Call The Silverado and download the new files list
4. Call the Kurpfalz BBS and upload mail via GSZ and
   download mail the same way (TOMCAT! as mail door on
   the Kurpfalz BBS)

This kind of job is created even faster than writing
it down here.

Intellicomm then checks the received QWK packets for the
NEWFILES.DAT and enters the list of new files with their
descriptions into a database.

As I'm running TriBBS too, I created an event to call
Intellicomm at a certain time and run this job. It's just
one line reading:

icom /run:mailrun


Intellicomm will automatically renumber an existing QWK
before downloading the new QWK and will renumber the REP after
uploading it. You can decide how many old copies you want
to keep. You can also ask Intellicomm to capture the whole
session thus enabling you to look for bulletins or the like.

Some of the main advantages which made me pick Intellicomm
are the ease with which one creates new BIFs and jobs, the
use of prompts to recognize where it is and react accordingly
which makes it pretty stable even if the SysOp of the BBS you
call tends to change things pretty often and last but not
least the price. Registration is only $29.95, it's a bargain!
Another interesting feature is, that the SysOp of a BBS can
create a BIF for his BBS (who knows the prompts better than
him) and offer it as ICOMAUTO.ZIP. Now if you download this
using Intellicomm manually, Intellicomm will unzip this file,
ask you for the name you use on this BBS and the password
and you are already done. That's what I call user friendly.

Just to give you an idea of Intellicomm's flexibility, couple
of months ago a SysOp of a BBS I called interrupted my
automatic session for a chat. We chatted for a couple of
minutes and after the chat was finished Intellicomm just
returned to the main menu of the BBS I was calling and picked
the job up again. Other SysOps (me for one) sometimes add or

drop a logon screen or enter some new program into the
logon.bat. In most cases this won't hinder Intellicomm in
perfoming the job, you needn't do anything about it. The
SysOp only has to use prompts he uses somewhere else too, eg
Press ENTER to continue...... If you told Intellicomm to hit
ENTER whenever it sees the text "ENTER to" it will hit ENTER.

With such an excellent program there must be a drawback you
ask? Well there certainly is.

IMHO the shareware version is crippled, most of you will
probably see this differently though. The unregistered
version insists on you pressing a key it randomly selects
whenever you execute the program. There are no other
limitations. This may not sound much but in effect it
disables unattended execution as you have to be present
to press the key. If the author were fast in handing out
the registered copies this really wouldn't matter, you can
fully test it and I for one believe the author that the
registered copy will work without having to press a key.
Problem is the author is difficult to get at, he recently
has started following the shareware echo in Fido though and
gives support there to registered and unregistered users.
Situation ought to improve.

At the date of writing this, the most current release is
Intellicomm v2.00, beta 3. File names:

ICOMB3-A.*
ICOMB3-B.*
ICOMB3-C.*

It is available on the Karico BBS in Toronto: +1-416-502-3611

Version 2.0 is supposed to already feature (among others)
a BIF for TriBBS/TriMail and finally has overcome the problems
it has had with HS/Link.

