Re: Checking Status of MSF/SMTP

Actually we use an automated process that constantly sends out an email
from "native" i to a for a payable fee yahoo account. We pay the fee to
have the yahoo account forward it on to a Notes account. Then an agent
checks this Notes account on a periodic basis. If it doesn't get an

email

in x minutes then we know there's something fubar in the chain somewhere.

It does no good to have QMSF jobs and the smtp jobs checked to see if

they

are active only to find out some other process is holding up the email.
If you do use the list jobs api to list both the QMSF jobs and the jobs
that appear in WRKACTJOB JOB(QTSMTP*) what are you going to do - Use MSF
to send you an email? Hire a night operator to check messages? Or save
money and buy a messaging product that doesn't rely on QMSF and QTSMTP*
jobs to page people?

For my purposes, it's enough to put a hold on the running of End Of Day/End
of Month and send a message to QSYSOP. I have users checking the system,
just not users sophisticated enough to pick out one informational message
out of hundreds. It's a little too late by the time hundreds of messages
like 'Job 576260/QMSF/QMSF stopped processing MSF message' start appearing.

I like your approach. We already have the same person checking the AS/400
checking to see that Notes is up as well. If I used an agent in Notes, I
assume that I would be able to craft a message that tells the user how to
debug whether the failure is on the AS/400 or on Yahoo or on our email
provider. Thanks for the idea.