to see the Auto-Update dialog box with sample schedule items. (Be aware that this dialog box’s appearance can vary depending on the version of Microsoft Windows you’re running.) Original publication date: February, 2002
To keep up to date with your EDI activity, Softshare recommends that Vista users download data from their Softshare mailboxes at least once a day—or more often if you receive large volumes of documents, are in the transaction testing phase with your trading partners, or handle time-sensitive data. Just as importantly, you need to regularly send mail from your Outgoing Mail folder, to ensure that acknowledgments and other outgoing transactions get delivered to your trading partners.
While you can receive and send mail manually by opening Vista and choosing Communicate|Send and Receive Mail , there’s an easier, automated way to ensure that Vista mail exchanges are performed. Vista’s Auto-Update feature lets you automatically send and receive mail according to a defined schedule, without having to launch Vista or perform any manual steps.
Configure Auto-Update settings from your Vista mailbox properties, accessed by selecting Tools|Mailbox from the menu and clicking Properties in the Mailbox window. In the Mailbox Properties window, go to the Auto-Update page and select the Enabled (Scheduled task(s) run at specified times) option to enable Auto-Update features. (Also, be sure to select Automatically check for new messages at startup if you want Vista to automatically download documents from your mailbox each time you open it.)
Finally, click the Edit Schedule button to display the Auto-Update dialog box, where you can easily configure a schedule for your Vista mail exchanges using Microsoft’s task scheduler features. Using these settings, you can have Vista exchange mail each day at specified times or when particular system events, such as startups and logons, occur.
If you're running a multi-user installation of Vista, you'll need to configure Auto-Update settings from the communications workstation, just like when you're doing a manual mail exchange.
Click here to see the Auto-Update dialog box with sample schedule items. (Be aware that this dialog box’s appearance can vary depending on the version of Microsoft Windows you’re running.)
For more information on this terrific, time-saving feature, check out the Softshare Vista Reference Manual, available by selecting Help|Contents in Vista or going to the software manuals area of eService. (Windows NT and Windows 2000 users should also refer to the Softshare Knowledge Base for additional information on configuring Auto-Update settings in these environments.)