Bulletin Mail

User Guide Content

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Introduction to Bulletin Mail

Bulletin Mail is a subscription push email service for your mobile phone which provides a dedicated mobile email address and integration with existing POP and IMAP email services. The system allows your email to roam with you, even when your office can't.

Whilst high end "smart phones" devices support for push email, Bulletin Wireless recognizes the need of push email services to users of low cost consumer handsets.

With a dedicated email address and the ability to access existing email and instant messaging accounts - Bulletin Mail offers all your mobile email needs in a single service. In general, there's no requirement for IT infrastructure changes or new hardware. Bulletin Mail offers a hosted SMS based alert system on all handsets and also provides an XHTML browser based interface in addition to RSS syndication.

Bulletin Mail has been available in the UK since 1999 and allows anyone to contact you wherever you are. Anyone with an email account can send you email from his or her email account to your mobile phone. There are no additional costs for the sender and no airtime or roaming charges for you.

Every user has their own @bulletinmail.com email address and the ability to access their regular POP and IMAP email accounts. Using Bulletin Mail you will be able to specify how, and what email is delivered to you via a set of filter and routing rules.

Up to 160 characters of the email will be displayed on your phone. This includes all the characters in the Senders Name, the Subject and Message fields. If you're sent a message longer than 160 characters, only the first part of the message will initially be sent - with the ability to request additional parts.

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Your Bulletin Mail email address

When your account is configured you will be assigned a login for the Bulletin Mail website. This login is also an important part of the email address you can hand out to people you want to be able to send email to your phone. For example if your login is 'jack.black' all email addressed to 'jack.black@bulletinmail.com' will be routed to you. Remember, you will be charged for all messages forwarded to your phone from Bulletin Mail.

Your Profile

Your Profile page allows you to check the information we have stored for you and to update some of it as your needs dictate.

• User Name
  This is your login name and part of your unique bulletin mail email address. This can only be edited by Bulletin Wireless Support.
• Account Created
  The date your account was created.
• First / Last Name
  The name of the person using the account. This will be used for email sent via SMS or the WAP interface.
• My Mobile
  The mobile number to receive messages on. This must be in international format that includes the country code and the phone number. Do not include spaces, letters, brackets or other special characters. See the section on International Number Format for examples.
• My Email
  The email address you can route messages to.
• Address
  Your Billing address used for contact and invoices.
• Country
  Select your country from the list. If you country is not displayed please contact support@bulletinwireless.net or select the closest country to you.
• SMS Alerts
  You can toggle SMS alerts here or via the WAP options menu (on your handset). When enabled all messages that are to route to your Mobile will be sent as SMS messages (WAP alerts included). When disabled Bulletin Mail will not send any SMS messages/alerts to your registered mobile number. You can use this to temporarily disable SMS alerts during meetings or when you do not want to be disturbed.
  
  Note, this does not change your filter rules but will prevent any that are routing to 'Mobile Phone' from being announced by SMS. All messages will still be logged to the Web Mail Log (and the WAP recent message list).
• Include WAP URL in SMS Alert
  If you have WAP access and your handset has a web browser then it may support XHTML. XHTML is a web standard for mobile web pages (WAP) that is used by BulletinMail to deliver richer messages than is possible via SMS. You may be able to view files (if supported by the phone) and can review recent unread messages and compose new ones to your contacts.
  
  If activated, You will receive a SMS alert for each message that includes a brief introduction to the message and a URL (internet address).
  
  To check if your handset can access the WAP pages use your phone to navigate to http://www.bulletinmail.com/user and login. If successful you should see a list of your most recent unread messages.
  How your handset handles URL's in an SMS message depends on the phone. Check your handset manual or ask your phone supplier for information. You may even like to send an email to your Bulletin Mail address that includes the http://www.bulletinmail.com/user URL and see what happens.
• Security Details
  Secure SSL browsing can be enabled for both the website, and WAP browsing. Unfortunately, not all handsets support SSL browsing so you may need to disable this option.

External Accounts

Bulletin Mail integrates with a variety of external services in order to look for new messages to push to your mobile device, whenever a new message is found it is processed through the normal Bulletin Mail messaging process of filter rule matching and message routing.

A simple four step configuration wizard is provided to easily configure any of the following types of service:

Connection Requirements All accounts require internet accessible address credentials (hostname, userid, and password) before Bulletin Mail will process the account on a regular basis. All server to server communication from Bulletin Mail uses SSL encryption where available. Security / Firewall Access If your desired services are secured behind corporate firewalls, contact your corporate IT department for setting up a firewall pinhole to Bulletin Wireless - all internet traffic from Bulletin Mail comes from the 219.88.240.64/27 IP range.

Server Errors and the Quarantine Period

It is possible that your external account is not able to be accessed by Bulletin Mail for security or configuration reasons. If your messages are not being picked up from your account check with your IT or email system administrator before contacting Bulletin support.

During the processing of an external service, any exception or problem encountered is logged in the Bulletin Mail system against the service in question and is viewable from the service profile screen.

Whenever Bulletin Mail checks a service that has had a problem within the last hour, it is deemed to be in "quarantine" and is skipped (meaning the service won't be polled for another hour). If 10 or more consecutive errors are recorded for the service (problems reoccurring over the course of ten hours) then the service is disabled and the user is sent an email alerting them to the fact the particular service had problems.

Every time a server is successfully serviced, any recorded errors against it are deleted.

External Account Configuration

• Title
  Specifies the "friendly" name associated with your Account address.
• Active
  Turns the external checking on/off for this particular account.
• Host
  Specifies your server for incoming messages. You can get this information from your Internet service provider or LAN administrator.
• Type
  Select the type of Account you are connecting to:
  • IMAP
    Internet Message Access Protocol - A protocol used to retrieve email messages. Most email clients use either the IMAP or the POP protocol.
  • POP3
    Post Office Protocol version 3. A messaging protocol commonly used on the Internet. It stores and forwards e-mail to users that log on to the mail server.
  • ICAL
    An Internet standard for creating and sharing electronic calendaring and scheduling information.
  • XMPP
    An Internet standard for enterprise instant messaging and presence.
• Logon Name
  Specifies your account name. This is usually the same as the part of your e-mail address to the left of the "at" sign ( @ ). For example, the name JohnDoe in JohnDoe@BulletinWireless.net.
  Some services require you to use the entire email address. If in doubt please contact the support department of the service you are trying to connect to
• Logon Password
  The password for your account.
• Your Name
  When you send messages, this name appears in the From field of your outgoing messages.
• Email Address
  Specifies the e-mail address that people should use when sending mail to you at this account. The e-mail address must be in the format name@company-for example, JohnDoe@BulletinWireless.net.

Bulletin Mail will start to poll newly configured external servers after a period of 10 minutes.

POP3 and IMAP Email Accounts

POP3 and IMAP email accounts are continually monitored for new, unread messages to push down to your mobile device.

Microsoft Exchange Bulletin Mail does not currently support the native MS Exchange protocol but Exchange can be configured to provide IMAP access. See the following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles dealing with configuring IMAP Virtual Servers for Microsoft Exchange. How to create an IMAP4 or a POP3 cluster resource on an Exchange Server 2003 virtual server HOW TO: Secure Internet Message Access Protocol Client Access in Exchange 2000 How to verify basic IMAP connectivity by using Telnet XADM: Unable to Connect Using IMAP/SSL

Instant Messaging Accounts

In addition to POP3 and IMAP support, Bulletin Mail provides mobile presence and instant messaging through use of the Jabber Extensible Communications Platform (Jabber XCP) from Jabber Inc. The Bulletin Mail service maintains an SSL encrypted connection to your XMPP instant messaging service, providing an always on WAP based presence to your online community. Incoming XMPP messages are processed and forwarded to your mobile for instant, mobile messaging. Access to your online contacts are also provided through the same WAP composer interface for quick and easy messaging.

For more information about Jabber, XMPP based instant messaging, and working with legacy IM services; read the Jabber User Guide.

Calendering Accounts

Bulletin Mail can be configured to monitor your published ICAL calendar for upcoming event notification.

Syndication Feeds

Bulletin Mail can monitor RSS and Atom feeds for new items to push to your mobile device.

This should not be used with high volume feeds unless you want A LOT of messages on your mobile device. Bulletin Mail does not aim to be a general purpose aggregation tool.

Filter Rules

Bulletin Mail puts you in complete control over what messages are delivered to, or blocked from your mobile device – by using a set of filters you are in control of your mail.

If you choose to Block an address or domain then any messages from these addresses will be listed in your Blocked Log.

Some senders may be covered by more than one rule so to avoid confusion it may be best to keep the rules as specific as possible (one per email address).

You can view your current rules summary via your Mail Profile Settings. To view the details of a rule simply click any part of the rule that you want to view/edit and make the changes. To create a new rule, click the "Add Rule" link in the navigation panel.

Blocking Unwanted Messages

Unsolicited email is a major problem that is compounded when it starts to appear on your phone - and you are paying to receive it! To minimize this, we suggest not using your Bulletin Mail address for any news groups or online registrations.

If you do receive messages from senders that you would like to block

• from your mobile via SMS
  Reply to the message with 'BL' and this sender will be added to your Blocked List and no more messages will be received from that sender to your mobile.
• from your mobile via WAP
  Open the message in your phone browser and select 'block' from the menu.
• from the Bulletin Mail website
  View the message detail and press the BLOCK button.

Whilst mail filtering is not an anti-spam solution, it is used in conjunction with such services to control how your mobile email is delivered. Bulletin Mail honors Spam headers from the following Anti Spam Products: Spam Assassin Quick Spam Filter dspam bogofilter Messages identified as SPAM by these products are automatically blocked by Bulletin Mail before processing any of your defined filters.

Replying to messages

Replying via SMS

Read your mobile manual for specific instructions on replying to SMS messages on your particular phone.

On most phones, select Reply from the menu (the long number that automatically appears is correct - do not remove this number), enter your message using the alphanumeric keypad, and select Send.

An SMS capable phone is required in order to reply to messages.

Your reply will be sent back to the sender's email address or mobile number.

There are some key SMS Commands that you can use when replying to a message.
In addition to replying with 'M[number]' for more message parts, you can reply with 'BL' to a message and this will BLOCK the sender from delivering anymore messages to your handset. This block can be removed by editing your rules on the Bulletin Mail website.
See the SMS Commands section for other options.

Replying via WAP

If you have configured your user options via the Bulletin Mail website to support WAP content and forward messages to your phone, you will receive a SMS that contains a URL. By opening this URL on your phone (methods differ phone to phone so see your handset user guide) the message will be displayed in your phone browser.

With the message open you can select 'Reply' and compose your message. This reply will be routed back to the message sender and also logged in the Bulletin Mail message logs.

WAP Authentication

Before viewing or replying to your messages via the WAP interface, you must first "login" to the WAP site by supplying your password and a time out period. Full access to the site is granted for the chosen period.

The default time out period gives full access for an hour, by after the time out period has expired, you are only prompted for your password when accessing the message and contact lists, or options; you are not prompted when viewing or replying to messages.

Message Sending

Composing Email via SMS

1. Create a message on your phone.
2. Begin the message with 'QM', followed by either one of your Quick Message Codes from your Bulletin Mail Online Address Book, or an email address.
3. Leave a space, enter the message using the alphanumeric keypad.
   
   QM SALES Weekly meeting rescheduled to Wednesday 10am. See you then.
   
   
   QM sales@bulletinwireless.com Hi, I am using Bulletin Mail and it is helping me get the edge on my competitors. Thanks!.
4. Select Send. When prompted for a number, type the destination number for Bulletin Mail. This will vary depending on your country and mobile provider.

The message will be sent as an email from the Email address as displayed when you are logged in (eg. yourname@bulletinmail.com) or as an SMS to a mobile phone, and the recipient will be able to reply as if it were a normal email or SMS.

Messages are sent to the internet as SMS messages. You are therefore limited to 160 characters for your message. Bulletin Mail does not currently support 'Long Message' format used by some handsets.

See the Mobile Originate Phone Numbers section for information on the numbers to use when sending email by SMS.

Composing Email via WAP

If your phone is WAP capable you can login to the Bulletin Mail Mobile site at http://bulletinmail.co.nz/user/ then select the 'compose' option.

The first step is to select the recipient from the list of your existing Bulletin Mail Contacts/Groups or entering a new one for this message. After selecting the recipient you should enter the body of the message then send it. All messages will be logged in the Web Site and any replies will be routed according to your Bulletin Mail filter rules.

Mobile Originate Phone Numbers

The standard numbers for all Bulletin Services are

In Addition, Bulletin Mail can also be sent to the following number/s

See the Composing Email via SMS section for information on sending email via SMS

SMS Commands

Bulletin Mail has several SMS Commands that you can use in reply to messages or in initiate a conversation. All SMS Commands that initiate a conversation or action should be sent to one of the Mobile Originate Phone Numbers or in reply to a Bulletin Mail message you have received.

COMMAND	SYNTAX	EXAMPLE	DESCRIPTION
BULLMAIL	BULLMAIL	Bullmail	Request basic information on Bulletin Mail and some of the SMS Commands available
QM	QM [alias] [message]	QM BOB Meeting time changed from 3pm to 4:40	Send a Quick Message to a contact or group in your Bulletin Mail online address book
M	M[n]	M3	Request more parts to a long message
BL	BL	BL	This reply blocks the sender of the message you are replying to
DND	DND [number][unit]	DND 5m	Sets a temporary Do Not Disturb period for you. Messages processed during this time will not be forwarded by SMS number may be a whole number between 1 and 60 unit may be m - minute, h - hour or d - day number can be replaced with OFF to disable the temporary Do Not Disturb period and return your Bulletin Mail account to normal functionality.

International Number Format

All numbers used in Bulletin services must be in International Format.

International Format is a number format that includes the country, carrier and phone numbers without any dialing prefixes (eg 00 or 001) or special characters such as the plus symbol (eg '642111111' not '+642111111').
The Following table shows how some numbers are displayed in international format.

For a list of some countries and their country code see the Country Codes page

RSS and Syndication

RSS is a standard XML format for content syndication and allows you to easily integrate your Bulletin Mail messages with other applications.

Bulletin Mail uses an authenticated RSS "feed" to deliver your mail log to any RSS aggregator that supports HTTP basic authentication. Depending on which news reader/aggregator you use the method of setting up will differ. However you will need your Bulletin Mail login details to authenticate at least the first time.

When a new message is stored in your Mail Log it will also appear in your news reader application. This means that you do not have to login to the web site to view your mail log.

The Bulletin Mail RSS feed can be found by clicking on the icon when logged in.

Message Archives

The web provides an easy to use archive of all messages processed by Bulletin Mail. The archive provides basic messaging functionality and is not intended to provide full web mail functionality.

Bulletin Mail provides quick access to sent, received, and blocked messages from the links in the menu. The archive provides additional "virtual folders" for each configured account.

• Blocking Messages
• Forwarding Messages
• Replying to Messages

Keyboard Navigation

The message log interface provides basic keyboard navigation:

Message Delivery

Your message will normally be received on the handset within seconds. However, some delays may occur due to the speed of the internet, and the senders network and the settings in the sender's email program.