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4.6.1 Administrative Messages

There are two types of administrative messages:

AWIPS sites and the NCF use these messages to communicate important information about things like outages and late model runs.

To create or edit an administrative message, you need to open a Text Window. Refer to Section 4.1 Text Display, and Section 4.2 Text Display Layout, to familiarize yourself with the various Text Display menus and the Control Bar. It is possible to create a new message by invoking the Text Editor, or to edit an existing message by displaying the message, and invoking the editor.

Module 20: Create and Edit Administrative Messages

Objective 1 - Provide Header Information

The first step in creating a message is to fill in the information in the Header Block Dialog Box.

1. From an empty Text Display Window, press the Enter Editor menu button. The header block opens.

2. Enter ADA or ADM for the product category.

3. For the product designator, enter your site AFOS ID.

4. You can address the administrative message several ways.

• If you want the message to be stored in the text database, but don't want it to be distributed, click the 000 button in the addressee part of the header block window.

• If you want to send the message to a specific site, type in the site's three character AFOS ID.

• If you want to send the message to your default group of sites, click the DEF button. This routes the message to each site in your default group.

• If you want to send the message to the Network Control Facility (NCF), type in "NCF." All other selections result in the message being sent to all sites.

5. Choose the message type as ADM (Administrative).

6. Keep this header block open for the next objective.

Objective 2 - Edit and Send a Message

1. Press the Enter menu button in the Header Block Dialog Box.

2. In the Text Editor, compose a text message.

3. Press the Send menu button. The message is sent and also stored in the text database. When the edited version of the message is stored in the text database, it does not overwrite the previous version.

4. To save an Administrative Message without sending it, press the Save menu button, which stores the message in the text database.

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