RJS Goes Native on AS/400 E-Mail Reporting
COMMON 2000, SAN DIEGO—Capitalizing on the growing popularity of Domino among AS/400 users, RJS Software Systems Inc. (Burnsville, Minn.) has expanded its product line to include native AS/400 e-mail reporting and conversion software. The company hopes the new products will help customers take better advantage of Lotus Domino or other familiar e-mail systems.
Two related products, SMTP/400 Email API and native AS/400 Email Report Distribution, are among the new offerings. The API product simplifies the process of e-mailing AS/400 text messages and database files without requiring the native AS/400 SMTP e-mail server to be active. It supports all SMTP compliant e-mail systems, including MS Exchange, Lotus Notes/Domino, Linux/Unix SMTP e-mail servers, and others. It can send AS/400 database files as CSV attachments, and features an interactive interface for text messages and a command line interface for CL, RPG and COBOL applications.
According to Arnold Blauert, VP of RJS, the company’s early products were tools for transporting reports from an AS/400 onto a PC client, from which it would be distributed. Now, Blauert says, the company is focused on making it easier to manage reports natively on the AS/400, which is what its new e-mail report distribution tool is designed to do. It supports all SMTP-compliant e-mail systems and allows reports to be delivered to one or more recipients, using any AS/400 output queue as a report mailbox. E-mail addresses can be user-defined within the spool file. Reports can be sent as e-mail attachments while undergoing automatic conversion to different formats. Automating the process in this way eliminates a number of steps that would normally accompany the process of requesting a report, bringing it onto a PC and distributing it from there.
“The power is now in the user, so they’re not waiting for a request and a report to be delivered,” Blauert says.
As a complement to the e-mail server and reporting products, RJS has also introduced FTP/400 File Transfer API and native AS/400 ASCII text, HTML, RTF and PDF converter products. Both can be integrated with any RJS native AS/400 application, as well as CL, RPG or COBOL applications.
All of the new products are designed to allow users to perform e-mail reporting functions without requiring that those functions be run on the AS/400 server. They also utilize native AS/400 security. This allows companies to continue to use a familiar e-mail platform, such as Lotus, while eliminating manual conversion of AS/400 files to Lotus format. Moreover, Blauert adds, it gives users the freedom to use platforms such as Domino without having to first configure the native AS/400 e-mail or FTP server.
“Those announcements are the result of ideas given to us by our customers,” Blauert explains. “These days, Lotus is being used for more than just e-mail. What we’re looking at is how do we get our products to take advantage of all that Domino has to offer.”
The new additions to RJS’ e-mail reporting products were generally available last month. Email Report Server/400 is priced at $4,900 per AS/400, FTP/400 and SMTP/400 list for $1,499 and the HTML, PDF, RTF and RAW report converters each sell for 1,299.
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