Object: external action

Description

External actions are used when it is desirable for the application that is running the knowledgebase execute a task such as sending e-mail. In fact, the CGI interface provides the ability to do this on systems that have a 'sendmail' command.

External actions are described by a table of parameters that are passed to the application. For example, sendmail uses the following fields:

id

email_support

path

parameters

parameter	value
type	sendmail
command	/usr/sbin/sendmail -t
to	[email protected]
from	%userEMail%
subject	No Solution in Support Knowledgebase
cc
bcc
message	%userName%'s comments: %additionalComments% Amzi! Version: %amziVersion% Operating System: %environmentNameVer% Known facts:

Notice the value fields can contain other objects.. For example in 'message':

%userName%'s comments:
%additionalComments% 

Amzi! Version: %amziVersion%
Operating System: %environmentNameVer%

Known facts:

The values for the question 'userName', 'additionalComments', 'amziVersion' and 'environmentNameVer' will be inserted into the message. (The CGI interface appends all the known facts onto the end of the message.)

External Action Properties

The properties of text objects are:

Property Name	Description	Default Value	Required
id	The name of this object. See Object Names for details.	<none>	yes
path	The folder this object is located in. See Folders for details.	/	yes
description	A text description (comment)--not used during reasoning.		no
parameters	A table of parameters to be passed to the calling application. All the fields are text and may contain object names in %'s.		yes