Overview	Quick Start	Setting Up Mailboxes and Groups

Introduction to Comet Electronic Mail

General Features

The Comet Electronic Mail system lets you send electronic messages to other users on a Comet system. Your messages may be sent to one person only or to a whole group of people. In either case, the messages are placed in a personal "mailbox" for each user to read, save, or delete at a later date. The system supports up to 10,000 mailboxes and 1,000,000 active messages.

Comet Electronic Mail is very easy to use. The program contains many useful "help" features and always includes a list of commands at the bottom of the screen. With this program, you can:

• send a message to any user with a mailbox on the Comet system
• read messages sent to you by other users
• be reminded that you have new messages in your mailbox
• send messages to a group of people
• print your messages to any printer attached to the Comet system
• display a summary of your messages
• save your messages in a personal "archive" file
• place your messages "in the trash"
• have your message reminders sent to up to ten terminals on the system
• read your messages from any terminal on the system
• send "private" messages to other users
• look up any mailbox or group using "wildcard" help features
• purge all messages by type and date

Mailboxes

Each user of the Comet Electronic Mail program is assigned an electronic "mailbox" where they may receive messages from other users. These mailboxes may be identified by the user's name, initials, nickname, or other identifying name (e.g., DAVE, SANDY, BILL, BOSS). For large organizations, the user's first and last names may be used as mailbox names to prevent possible confusion between two people with the same first or last name.

Mailbox names are assigned with the program called CEMM. This program includes options to:

• create mailboxes for new users of the program
• edit mailbox characteristics for existing users
• list existing mailboxes (using "wildcard" help features)
• delete mailboxes
• purge messages from mailboxes

Each mailbox includes the user's name, a password to be used when the user is reading "private" messages, the default printer name for that user to print messages (e.g., LP1), the default terminal name for that user (e.g., T05), and a list of up to ten terminal names where reminders will be displayed when that user has new mail.

Groups

In addition to individual mailboxes, the Comet Electronic Mail program provides for groups. A group is a collection of more than one mailbox; when a message is sent to a group, it is sent to the mailbox of each user in the group.

Group mailboxes are created with the program called CEMM. This program includes options to:

• create new group mailboxes
• edit existing group mailboxes
• list existing group mailboxes
• delete group mailboxes

Reminders

Each time a message is sent with the Comet Electronic Mail program, the recipient is notified via a reminder displayed on the message line of the recipient's terminal (or terminals, if the recipient has defined more than reminder terminal for their mailbox).

In addition to this initial notification, the recipient receives a reminder message every five minutes thereafter until they have read their new messages. Once all new messages are read, the reminders will cease.

The reminder messages are sent by a program called CEMRMDR. This program runs in a background partition of the Comet system and is activated only when a new message is sent. The program remains active as long as there are new, unread messages in any mailbox; as soon as all the new messages are read, this program terminates itself, freeing up the background partition.

The reminder program also conserves system resources by suspending operation between reminders (i.e., for five minutes). Thus, the reminder program is active only once every five minutes, and only while there are new, unread messages.

Message Categories

Each mailbox has four categories of messages:

• new unread
• new read
• archived
• trashed

New messages are the current messages in the mailbox. When a message is sent, it is placed in the new category. It is also flagged as an "unread" message until the mailbox owner reads the message. After a message is read, it remains in the new category until the mailbox owner moves it to another category (i.e., archived or trashed).

Archived messages are those that the user wants to keep in the mailbox, but not in the new category. Typically, archived messages are those that the user wants to save for some period of time, or those that the user wants to read and respond to at a later time.

Trashed messages are those that the user wants to remove from the mailbox. When a message is placed in the trash category, it stays there until the user issues a command to delete trashed messages (thus, to delete a message from your mailbox, you must read it, move it to the trash, and then delete it).

The Comet Electronic Mail program (CEMAIL) provides options to send messages, read messages, move messages to various categories, print messages, and delete trashed messages.