How does MarkVision Messenger work?

MarkVision Messenger communicates with the MarkVision Server to let you create and configure automated responses to printer events. These responses are called Actions. When you create an Action, you must specify three things:

With MarkVision Messenger, you can create Actions to automate many printer administration tasks. For example, you can configure Actions to:


Event Types

Your Action can be triggered by two types of events:

Device Status Alerts

A Device Status Alert is a notification that something has changed at a printer. For example, when you pull a paper tray out of a printer, the printer tells MarkVision Messenger that the tray is now missing. This is represented in MarkVision Messenger by an event with name = "Paper Tray Missing" and state = "ACTIVE".
When the tray is put back into place, the printer tells MarkVision Messenger that the tray is no longer missing. This is represented in MarkVision Messenger by an event with name = "Paper Tray Missing" and state = "CLEARED".
You can configure your Action to respond to an event when its state is "ACTIVE," when its state is "CLEARED," or both. If your Action responds to Device Status Alerts, you will be prompted to choose the specific device status alerts that will trigger your action.

Printer Folder Alerts

A Folder Alert is generated when printers enter and/or exit a specified folder. For example, you could create a folder in MarkVision Professional that contains printers with a Toner Level less than 10%, and create an Action in MarkVision Messenger to notify you when printers enter this folder. If your Action responds to Printer Folder Alerts, you will be prompted to choose a folder.


Device Selection

When choosing the devices your Action will monitor, you have three choices:

All Devices on the MarkVision Server

If your Action will monitor all devices on the MarkVision Server, choose this option.

Devices in a Specified Folder

If your Action will monitor only a specific folder, choose this option. For example, if you were in charge of devices on the third floor, and had configured a folder on the MarkVision server that included these devices, you could limit the number of devices your Action monitors by choosing this folder.

Selected Devices

If your Action will monitor only specific devices, choose this option.

Command types

There are three types of commands that your Action can execute:

Send an SMTP e-mail

Your Action, when triggered, will send an e-mail to addresses you specify. These e-mails are highly customizable from within MarkVision Messenger. For example, an Action, triggered by a Folder Alerts event, could e-mail an administrator when monitored printers enter a "Low Toner" folder. This e-mail message could be configured to list the model of printer, its IP address, and the time at which it entered the "Low Toner" folder.

Execute a command line on the MarkVision Server

Your Action, when triggered, will execute a command line. For example, if you wanted to keep a log of offline devices, you could configure your Action to respond to the "Offline" Device Status Alert. Each time a monitored device becomes offline, specified information will be written to a text file. Like the example above, the information MarkVision Messenger writes to this text file is highly customizable. For example, you could specify that the text file list the device model, page count, and the time at which it went offline.

Execute a command line on a remote host server.

Your Action, when triggered, will execute a command line on a remote host server. In order to execute command lines on a remote host server, the rexec client must connect to a rexec server on the remote host server

Furthermore, you can specify whether to perform commands conditionally or repeatedly, and how to execute them. You can have your Action execute its command:

For example, if your Action sends an e-mail message when a printer goes offline, you can delay the execution of the command for a specified amount of time. This way, if the printer returns online during the delay period, the e-mail will not be sent. See Delaying Event notifications for more information.
For example, if your Action is triggered by a Paper Tray Missing event, but you only want to execute the command when the event occurs for Tray 3, you could write a custom filter to specify that your Action only respond when Tray 3 is removed from monitored printers. See Custom Filters for more information.