To all Spoolmate AND Vista users:

This message is an enhancement idea for users who use both Spoolmate and Vista.
I have given
this idea to Quest and Unison, but without input from other users, it will not
receive a high
priority to see a timely implementation. So read on and if the idea will
benefit your
environment, please contact Both companies and make the request. And, if you
have any
suggestions as to how I can make better use of the products "as is", please let
me know.

Assumption:
I have configured my printing environment around Spoolmate so that through one
tool I can
manage my printers and report distribution.

Here's the problem:
A job creates a large report, say a departmental expense report; sections go to
various
department managers or directors, but not necessarily consecutive departments.
This is
tedious to split out by hand (but my users were doing it). Using VISTA, I can
change my job
so that after the report is created, it will stuff (VSAVE) the report into
VISTA. Using
Logical Views, I can then assign pages of the report and have "sub-reports"
printed from
there -- but for each small report, how does my operator know who it belongs
to?? Currently,
my 2 options are 1) assign a unique report name to each user which does
identify the
recipient, but then loses visibility as to the original report name, or 2) use
a Spoolmate
Spoolfile definition and Analysis to capture and track the split-out
sub-reports and
determine based upon string matching who the recipient is, but this becomes
difficult when
certain strings belong to different people who receive different parts of the
report except
for a single common part.

Here's the idea:
Expand the Logical View portion of VISTA to include fields for each view that
contain values
for Spoolmate Recipient, Spoolmate Priority, and Spoolmate Stationery. Then,
when the
sub-report is split out, it will be completely ready for the (Spoolmate)
printing
environment. Further, management of sub-report stays completely within Vista
and is greatly
simplified.
   It might be possible to implement this by having Vista "grab" the ofid of
each split-out
report and execute a CONMAN Alter command specifying the values of Recipient,
Priority, and
Stationery as appropriate.

Thanks for listening,

Mike Gabriel
Manager, Computer Operations
Hughes (NOT going to be Raytheon - whew) Avicom International
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