Gumbo Software Adds File Splitting to Spool Tools

Gumbo Software is making it easier for customers to distribute their spool files, with recent updates to its spool file tools for OS/400. In January, the Seattle software company started shipping new releases of two products, SpoolMail V2R1 and Spool-a-Matic V1R8, which both gained the capability to split OS/400 spool files, among other enhancements.

Spool-a-Matic is a utility for converting OS/400 spool files into PC formats that can be more easily distributed and read by an OS/400 shop’s customers and business partners. After converting the spool file into PDF, RTF, HTML, or TIFF format, the product places the file in any directory on the network.

With Spool-a-Matic V1R8, the product gains the capability to split a spool file into multiple output files, based on data on the page. Customers can use this feature to separate pages by branch, by customer, or by other criteria, Gumbo says. Other new features added with this release include the new Display Page Data command, which displays selected data from within a spool file, and can be used to create an index of related spool files that contain a certain customer’s invoices, for example.

Like Spool-a-Matic, Gumbo’s SpoolMail utility also converts spool files into PC formats, but it also adds the capability to send the resulting file as an e-mail. With SpoolMail V2R1, the product also gains spool file splitting capabilities and enables OS/400 shops to split a spool file into multiple documents and then e-mail those files to the appropriate people, based on data in the spool file itself. If there is no e-mail address in the spool file, but some other identifying information like a customer number, the product now has an exit program for finding the customer’s e-mail address.

SpoolMail V2R1 also has the capability to include up to 64 additional PC files in the e-mail, either as attachments or in the body of the e-mail. Like Spool-a-Matic, the new SpoolMail release gets the new Display Page Data command, among other enhancements.

The pricing for SpoolMail and Spool-a-Matic is identical. System-wide licenses for the products are tier-based and range from $695 to $8,395, while partition-based pricing starts with a $625 base fee and adds $700 per processor. For more information and trial downloads, go to www.gumbo.com.