Release Notes for the OGN Mobile IWP Release .3

Known Issues:
1. Odditites can occur surrounding the user session and timeouts when a session timeout has occured. This is being explored, but deferred until reports from onsite have taken place.

2. Waiting on software update from iNeda to support loading up the Handstan user interface with a user session intact.

Potential Issues:

Release History:
Saturday, June 10 - Inital Release .1

Wednesday, June 14 - .2 Update with several small bug fixes, including:
a) Video socket restoration after poweroff
b) CRM hotlinks corrected so button and image go to the same place
c) Added logging and logging levels as a configurable item in tote.txt

Thursday, June 15 - .3 Update with bug fixes:
a) Issue with Login screen after usage of the application
b) Addition of slideshow and transitions on Splash page (see download_graphics.txt for Splash page images)

Mobile IWP Features:

1) Skinnable
2) Configurable
3) CRM functionality and Attract Page Loop
4) Targetted Messaging functionality
5) Usage Logging
6) Channel-based broadcast messaging
7) Coupling of video channel with broadcast messaging channel
8) Remote Command & Control

Deploying the Mobile Wagering Platform. (Configured for : 172.17.131.62)

To deploy the client side - you need the following:
iwp application
DLL Registry app (WM5) (PocketPC2003)
Embrosix DLL

To deploy the server side of the mIWP, a server is required to host the skin and configuration files. The mIWP product is compiled with a reference to this server and the root configuration file (config.txt). This functionality allows for the skinnability and configurability of the mIWP. Nearly any kind of web server will work, at this time Application Server functionality is not used (such as ASP/PHP/JSP) however, this may change in future revisions.

Our experience has shown the Apache webserver to be a reliable and affordable platform for the deployment of the mIWP backend.

Deployment at this time is simple.

1) Identify the server and path to the configuration files
2) Unzip the skin package into this path
3) Make any necessary configuration changes to the configuration files.

Configuring the Mobile Wagering Platform.

The mIWP is designed to be highly configurable for our clients. The configuration files are generally a collection of name/value pairs, however some configurations, such as the video, applications and URL configuration have complex values. There are currently 7 configuration files which deal with different configuration issues. The root configuration file is config.txt. This file simply provides links to the various configuration files and the order in which these files should be processed. Notes and Commentary can be included in these configuration files by preceding the comment with a /.

tote.txt
The tote.txt file provides the base application configuration variables.

NoLogin - Whether or not to authenticate against a backend. This is used mainly for testing, in production it should either not exist, or be set to 1

url - The base location of the Handstan application

loginsesrvice - The service path for login to the Handstan

pollservice - The service path for keep-alive poll to the Handstan

logoutservice - The service path for logout to the Handstan

LoginTimeout - Number of seconds before a timeout is fired during the login process.

PollInterval - Session Keep-alive polling interval for Handstan

AffinityClubURL - Url of the Affinity Club, such as the Diamond Club. NOTE: Not yet used, see applications.txt

LogUserActions - Whether or not to post user actions

LogServer - The server which the actions are posted to

logService - The service path which accepts user logs

Logging - Debug logging - set to true|1 to enable

LogLevel - Debug Logging level - 1|2|3

CRM - Whether or not to enable CRM

CRMServer - The server which will provide the CRM service

CRMService - The path to the CRM service

CRMTimeout - Length of time to allow a CRM offer to be present on screen before timing out to the application menus.

 

preload_graphics.txt - NOTE - For Windows Mobile 5, always use the download_graphics.txt, the preload_graphics.txt should be empty.
The preload_graphics.txt file provides the linkage information for aquiring skin graphics files. It is important that in the name/value pairs, the name remain consistant, as the application uses these names internally to locate the graphics images for various elements of the application. Supported filetypes are JPG and PNG. JPG is the recommended file format.

applications.txt

The applications.txt file provides the linkage information for configuring a web-based application (such as wagering or user accounts) to names, which the mIWP platform will use to launch a given application at a user request.

URLS.txt

The URLS.txt file provides the button name and URL location for web pages that are to be included in the Internet section of the mIWP. The format for an entry is as follows:
NEWS=[#URL:"http://www.equibase.com", #name:"Equibase"]
Where the name (NEWS) is not currently used. the #URL is a resolvable WWW address and the #name is what should show up on the button.

video.txt

The video.txt configuration is the most complex of the configuration files. This configuration allows for the configuration of several areas of the video interface. Here's a sample entry:

video1=[
#ip:"239.0.0.100",
#port:5701,
#textIP:"225.1.2.3",
#textport:4321,
#title:"Slash Cam",
#text:"Touch Video for Full Screen\rThis is a new descriptive line of text"]

ip is the broadcast address of the streaming channel
port is the port used with broadcast address of the streaming channel
textIP is a broadcast address of a text broadcaster associated with the channel.
textport is the port associated with textIP.
title is the name of the channel, which shows up on the user interface
text is the default text to display when this channel is chosen. This text will be overriden by any broacast text, but occasionally text broadcasting may not be taking place.

As you can see, different text broadcast channels can be applied to each video channel if desired. This is a very powerful feature, which will allows for simulcast channels to have an associated text feed for things such as odds, runner and time to post information.

Furthermore, custom broadcast channels can be configured for things such as headline news, sports news, international news, finance, upcoming events... you get the picture.

crm.txt

The crm.txt file provides a method for preloading CRM messages into the system, so that these messages can be randomly displayed if a CRM server is not available. The format of these entries are as follows:
Laffit=[#URL:"http://www.calracing.com/pincay.php",
#imageurl:"/CRMOffers/Offer1.jpg",
#image:"Offer1.jpg"]
Where the name field (Laffit) is not currently used. The URL is the landing page of the CRM offer and the #image provides the path to the CRM image on the deployment server. It is best to make sure that any images used in this manner are preloaded in the preloaded_graphics.txt file. Future revisions of software may be more sophisticated concerning this feature.
CRM functionality is still up in the air.

messages.txt

The messages.txt file provides the means for assigning human readable messages to standard conditions which require user messaging, and use the user message screen within the mIWP. These instances include issues with the login and other feedback items. Future revisions of this software will use either or message format (text) or an image format designed to be nicely rendered and act as an element of the skin.