USING THE FORUM USTATUS AND SEND COMMANDS Practice Forum Help File by Mike Schoenbach Last updated: May 17, 1989. Many of your CompuServe friends and acquaintances are often online in your favorite CompuServe Forum(s) at the same times you are. For this reason, it's usually very convenient to find out who else is currently online in the Forum. At times, you may see a friend of yours who you want to get a message to right away. Other times, perhaps, you will see some Forum members who you'd like to invite to the Forum's conference area so you can get to know them better. CompuServe offers two very convenient commands to facilitate this type of "real-time" communication between Forum members: USTATUS and SEND. The USTATUS command (which stands for User STATUS) allows you to view a listing of users that are currently online in the Forum with you. By entering the UST command (the common abbreviation for USTATUS) at any Forum '!' command prompt, CompuServe will display a listing similar to the following: User User ID Nod Area Name ---- ------------- --- ----- ------------------- 1 76703,4363 LIS SysOp Mike Schoenbach 2 73270,232 GNC Mes John Doe 3 76403,1012 WPM Mes Susan Duncan 4 72241,2232 MFL Mes Roger Diamond 5 70207,15 MAU Rm 4 Lisa P. Feldberg 6 75000,23 WPM Lib Joe Salomi 7 74026,121 DAO Rm 4 Dick Brady 8 76703,1 NYY Group Richard Wallstein 9 76320,323 SPC Group Keith Connolly 10 70023,1214 KCO Lib David Garcia As you can see from the above example, the display is divided up into five columns: USER - A temporary number assigned to you for your current session only. USER ID - CompuServe User ID number. NOD - Three letter node (access point) identification. AREA - Area of the Forum the member is currently using: Mes - Messages Lib - Libraries Rm # - Conference Room # Group - Conference Group SysOp - Sysop maintenance area (accessible only to Forum Sysops) NAME - Member's name or handle (note that names larger than 19 characters long are truncated in the UST listing) All members appearing in the UST listing are ALSO CURRENTLY ONLINE USING THE FORUM. You can use the Forum SEND command to send a one line (73 character) message to any member who is online in the Forum with you. The format of the SEND command is: SEN user# message text. Example: SEN 3 Hi Susan! How have you been? Susan (User 3) will receive the following message on her screen: ;;[1] Mike Schoenbach - Hi Susan! How have you been? The double semi-colon indicates that the message Susan received is a SEND. The number in brackets represents the SENDER's temporary USER number (NOTE: *NOT* User ID number). The name appearing after the USER number is the name of the SENDER. The text appearing to the right of the dash is the text of the SEND line. To respond to Mike Schoenbach, Susan would enter: SEN 1 I'm doing fine, Mike. What have you been up to? Many great conversations and friendships have started this way!