Overview of PageGate SNPP Server Module Transcript for Video:
Welcome to the video tutorial on PageGate’s SNPP server module.
Before we begin, the SNPP server module requires PageGate’s GetASCII interface to function. For licensing information, please contact our Sales Department at sales@notepage.com or by phone at 781-829-0500 x 1.
The first step is to find the location of the PageGate program and data directories. To do so, open the PageGate Admin, then go to Program – Settings. Here on the right, make a note of the program directory as well as the root of your general data folders.
Now that we have those paths, we’ll need to create a directory for the SNPP server’s files. Typically speaking, we recommend that you create this directory on the PageGate server itself but this isn’t a requirement. You can host this process on another system and share the SNPP server’s folder on the network to grant the PageGate server access to it.
In this tutorial, we’ll be doing the local configuration, so open a file browser and browse in to the PageGateData directory. Next, create a folder. This folder can be named anything you like but I recommend using the name SNPP just to keep things simple.
Now we want to browse in to the PageGate program directory. Once there, find snpp.ini, snppserver.exe and pininfo.txt, select them and copy them. Then browse back in to the SNPP folder you created and paste the files here.
Next, open snpp.ini in your preferred text editor.
The snpp.ini file is the basic configuration file for the SNPP server and controls the server’s basic settings and behaviors.
The Port field designates what port your SNPP server will listen to. By default, this is the standard SNPP port, 444.
The Max Message Length value determines how long messages received by the SNPP server can be. By default, this is 240 characters, which means the SNPP server will only accept up to 240 characters in a single message and messages longer than 240 characters would need to be split.
OutputFolder determines where the SNPP server will output received messages. This can be any folder local to the SNPP server but I recommend using the SNPP server directory as the output folder. In this instance, we would use c:\PageGateData\SNPP\ as the output folder.
LogFolder determines where the SNPP server will write its log. This can be any folder local to the SNPP server but I recommend using the PageGate logging folder. In this instance, we would use c:\PageGateData\Logs\
MaxLogLength determines how large the SNPP server’s log is allowed to be. By default, this is 100KB (100000 bytes).
DetailedLog determines whether the SNPP server’s logs should record summary information or should record the detailed transaction information. We definitely recommend setting DetailedLog to true.
SilentRejections determines whether or not the SNPP server should notify the sender of a bad ID/PIN number. If this is enabled and something tries to send to an ID that doesn’t exist, they will receive a hard rejection error indicating so. If this is disabled and something tries to send to an ID that doesn’t exist, they will not be notified that the message was rejected.
Sender allows you to hard-code the sender value for all accepted messages.
ExtractSender configures the SNPP server to look for sender’s information at the beginning of a message and expects a colon as a dividing character.
Login allows you to configure a password required to access your SNPP server. If this field has a value, users must authenticate with the LOGI(LOGIN) SNPP command and provide the information specified in this field.
Max Connections determines the maximum number of simultaneous inbound connections the SNPP server is allowed to handle at once.
And last we have a field that doesn’t appear in the INI file by default, the registration line. To register the SNPP server module, you’ll need to add this line to the bottom of the file:
Registration=XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
And you’ll want to replace the X’s with your registration key number.
Once you’ve finished setting the SNPP server’s configuration values, save and close the INI file.
Next, open pininfo.txt
This file tells the SNPP server what range of value can be passed to the server. The format of the entries defined in this text file are:
"Starting PIN", "Ending PIN", "recipient type"
If you would like ID numbers in a range to be recognized as the recipient's name (not using ad-hoc, but using recipient names in PageGate), you would add a line that uses the text "PG_Recipient" after the specified range. For example:
"0001","9999", "PG_Recipient"
If you would like IDs passed through PageGate in an ad-hoc setup, use the name of a Recipient in PageGate whose type is Ad-Hoc. For example:
"0000001","4999999","adhoc1"
It’s important to note that alphanumeric sequences are allowed. For example, if we want the program to accept any value from A001 to Z999, you would use the following:
“A001”,”Z999”,”PG_Recipient”
It’s also important to note that you can specify * as a starting and ending range to indicate that the program should accept all IDs. For example:
“*”,”*”,”PG_Recipient”
Once you’ve configured the ranges of IDs the SNPP server should accept, save and close the pininfo.txt file.
Now we’ll need to determine if we want to run the SNPP server as an application or Windows service. To run it as an application, simply double click on snppserver.exe to run the program. However, we definitely recommend running the SNPP server as a Windows service. Applications are logon dependent, which means a user must be logged in to the desktop of Windows before an application can run. Windows services, on the other hand, are not logon dependent, which means that you could reboot the system and not log in to the desktop and the SNPP server will still run and accept messages in the background.
To run the SNPP server as a service, run a command prompt with elevated permissions in Windows. To do so, go to your start menu, then search for the word ‘command’. When ‘Command Prompt’ comes up, right click on it and select ‘Run as Administrator’.
Change directory in to the SNPP server program directory.
Once here, type snppserver /reinstall and hit enter.
Now open the Windows Services list.
Find the PageGate SNPP server service, then right click on it and select ‘Start’.
The final step is to configure PageGate’s GetASCII interface to watch for output from the SNPP server. To do that, open the PageGate Admin.
Now go to Interfaces – GetAscii – Settings. If you do not currently have a polling directory specified, set this to the SNPP server’s output folder. By default, c:\PageGateData\SNPP\. Check Enabled, click Apply and tell it yes, you do want this to be enabled.
If you do already have a polling directory specified, you’ll want to go to Interfaces – GetAscii – Settings – Advanced Polling – Files.
Click Add to add a new entry to the files table.
Set Recipient to: *
Set From to SNPP
Set File(s) to: *.asc
Set the Path to the SNPP server’s output folder. By default, c:\PageGateData\SNPP\
Set File Type to: Standard
Then click Apply and click Apply again.
This concludes the video tutorial on how to configure PageGate’s SNPP server.
|
