Automatic Build Tool cont'd

[Al Vas]

Hi,

I thank everyone for their comments previously in regard to their preference
between FinalBuilder 4 and ABS.

After briefly evaluating both I'd like to ask a couple of questions if
anyone with experience in these products can help.

One of my most time-consuming tasks is notifying current clients of
impending release of software. Whilst both have email sending capabilities,
it appears that FB4 requires that you enter each email individually (ie
doesnt seem to be a capability to import a contact list, an Outlook contact
list for example). Is this correct? Or is there a feature that I havent
seen to do this? ABS appears to allow you to retrieve lists at least from
Outlook. Ideally it would be good to allow filtering of entries as an
action, it doesnt appear either have this option.

Also, from what I can see FB4 doesnt have a Pascal-based script, only Java
or VBScript. Being a dedicated Delphi development environment, this would
also be important for us. Is there maybe a plugin of some sort?

Other than these, both products look to be very capabale and powerful. Any
advice appreciated.

Regards

Alex

[Vincent Parrett (VSoft Technologies)]

"Al Vas" <no...@nogo.com> wrote in message
news:43d3...@newsgroups.borland.com...

> One of my most time-consuming tasks is notifying current clients of
> impending release of software. Whilst both have email sending
> capabilities, it appears that FB4 requires that you enter each email
> individually (ie doesnt seem to be a capability to import a contact list,
> an Outlook contact list for example). Is this correct?

You can easily grab contacts from an Outlook group using some VBScript. On
the Project Menu, select Project Global Script and then in the script
editor, past the following :

'----------------------------------------------------
Function FindDistributionList(strName)
Const olFolderContacts = 10
Dim myOlApp
Dim myNameSpace
Dim i
dim myDL

Set FindDistributionList = nothing
Set myOlApp = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
Set myNameSpace = myOlApp.Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
set contactsFolder = myNameSpace.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderContacts)
'Go through all the distribution lists in the folder
For i = 1 To contactsFolder.Items.Count
If TypeName(contactsFolder.Items.Item(I)) = "DistListItem" Then
Set MyDl = contactsFolder.Items(I)
if contactsFolder.Items(i).DLName = strName then
set FindDistributionList = contactsFolder.Items(i)
exit for
end if
end if
next
End Function
'----------------------------------------------------

then in the BeforeAction script event of the SMTP action you can do
something like this :

dim i
dim MyDL
dim DLMember
'Clear the existing list if you want.
Action.RecipientsList.Clear
Set MyDL = FindDistributionList("My Group Name")
if not (MyDL is nothing) then
For i = 1 To MyDl.MemberCount
Set DLMember = MyDl.GetMember(i)
if DLMember.Address <> "" then
Action.RecipientsList.Add DLMember.Name, DLMember.Address
end if
next
else
MsgBox "Didn't find the group!"
end if

Also, you can load email recipients from a file (each address on a new line)
with one line of VBScript, e.g :

Action.RecipientsList.AddFromFile "C:\temp\email.txt"

or from a delimited list (you can specify the delimeter) :

Action.RecipientsList.AddDelimitedList "j...@bloggs.com,mi...@bloggs.com",","
(you can also substitute FB variables here too)

> Also, from what I can see FB4 doesnt have a Pascal-based script, only Java
> or VBScript. Being a dedicated Delphi development environment, this would
> also be important for us. Is there maybe a plugin of some sort?

No, we spent some time evaluating which scripting languages to support. The
components/library we based out scripting support on does support a Delphi
Script, however we felt that it was not a good language for scripting (not
wanting to get into debate about the merits of different languages here),
and because most scripting examples out there are in either VBScript and
JavaScript we settled on those two languages. Also, since the vendor of the
library long ago stopped supporting their product we probably won't be
adding delphiscript support, we have already made many modifications to the
scripting library to resolve memory leaks and bugs and don't wish to deal
with an unsupported script interpreter (VBScript & JScript are provided by
microsoft).

The above script was cobbled together in a few minutes with a quick search
for examples on google (copy & paste.... no converting to the equive delphi
script needed).

BTW, we have a very active support newsgroup at news://news.finalbuilder.com
or http://news.finalbuilder.com , or you can contact us at support at
finalbuilder dot com if you need further support during or after your
evaluation.

HTH

--
Regards

Vincent Parrett
VSoft Technologies
http://www.finalbuilder.com
Blogs : http://blogs.finalbuilder.com
----------------------------------------
Automate your Build Process with FinalBuilder

[Al VAs]

Thanks for your in-depth reply Vincent,

Im sure I will make more use of your newsgroup whilst continuing my trial.

Alex

"Vincent Parrett (VSoft Technologies)" <vincent@.nospam.finalbuilder.com>
wrote in message news:43d45006$1...@newsgroups.borland.com...