Using MainBoss @Requests

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The @Requests program is designed to deal with work requests automatically. However, there may be times when you want to force @Requests to perform a particular action outside its usual schedule.

For example, suppose you have configured @Requests to run once a day. However, someone submits an emergency problem report that should be handled immediately. In this case, you can use the configuration program to tell the program, "Handle all received work requests right away, even if you aren't scheduled to do so."

You may also have configured @Requests so that it does not run automatically. (See @Requests Configuration Preferences for a description of how to do this.) If @Requests does not run automatically, incoming requests will not be processed until you explicitly tell @Requests to do so.

You control @Requests through the configuration program's Actions menu. Possible actions are:

Retrieve E-mail: Checking for incoming messages
Update Logs: Processing the incoming messages and checking to see what has happened with previous work requests
Send Acknowledgements: Sending acknowledgements to tell requestors about the progress of their requests
Do All: Performs all three of the above steps

Typically, you would just select Do All—this does everything necessary to handle new and old requests. However, there may be situations in which you want to perform one type of action without performing others. For example, if you want to review incoming messages before actually processing them, you would perform Retrieve E-mail so you could see what messages you receive. You could then reject any received requests that you wished to ignore. After you have got rid of such messages, you can proceed with Update Logs and Send Acknowledgements (in that order).

The sections that follow describe the separate steps of processing requests. Remember that you can use Do All to do all the steps in the proper order.

Important: If you have configured @Requests to run automatically, all of the actions described in these sections are handled for you. You only have to perform these actions "by hand" if @Requests does not run automatically. For an explanation of running @Requests automatically, see @Requests Configuration Preferences.