Hack92.Automate Chat

Hack 92. Automate Chat

If you need to send chat messages to a group of people often, why not use this script hack to create a multichat session and send messages to all participants on your behalf.

Works with: Windows version of Skype.

Sending chat to a lot of people at once can be tedious, and doubly so if you have to do this often, which can be the case for tightknit teams or groups of, say, 10 or more people that use chat a lot. So, the next time you need to send "Progress meeting, 4 p.m. today, room 101" to 50 people, consider automating sending the chat message with this script, chat.vbs. This is also the ideal way to start a multiperson chat session with a lot of participants, as your opening message starts the chat session, adds all participants to that chat session, and then opens the chat window (optional, see script), ready for you to continue chatting.

 ' File: chat.vbs ' Invoke like this from the command-line: '    chat /u=skypeuser1 /u=skypeuser2 MessageText ' ' Parameters: ' /u=skypeuser1 - Recipients (up to 50) of the chat message have '                 their Skype names prefixed with "/u=" ' MessageText   - Text for the chat message ' Global variables Dim objShell     ' Scripting shell object Dim arrUsers     ' Array of users to send Dim objSkypeAPI  ' SkypeAPI object Dim objChat      ' Chat object Dim bComplete    ' Flag to indicate when process is done Dim strChatCmd   ' Holds the command to create the chat ' Main script begins here Set objShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell") Set objSkypeAPI = WScript.CreateObject("SkypeAPI.Access") objSkypeAPI.ConnectAndWait 15000 bComplete = False ' Count how many users are passed Set objArgs = WScript.Arguments iCount = 0 bUsersFound = False Redim arrUsers(objArgs.Count) For i = 1 to objArgs.Count     If (Left(objArgs(i-1), 3) = "/u=") And (Not bInMessage) Then          arrUsers(i-1) = Mid(objArgs(i-1), 4)          iCount = iCount + 1         If iCount > 50 Then             Exit For         End If         bUsersFound = True     ElseIf bUsersFound Then         If Not bInMessage Then             bInMessage = True         Else             strMessage = strMessage + " "         End If         strMessage = strMessage + objArgs(i-1)     End If Next ' Prompt the user if the correct parameters weren't sent If iCount > 50 Then     objShell.Popup "You are limited to 50 users", 0, _         "Unable to Send Message", 48 ElseIf (iCount = 0) Or (Len(strMessage) = 0) Then     objShell.Popup "/u=user1 /u=user2 Message to Send", _         0, "Broadcast Chat Message Script Usage", 64 Else     ' Resize users array     Redim Preserve arrUsers(iCount)     ' Connect to Skype and wait for finish     objSkypeAPI.ConnectAndWait 15000     If objSkypeAPI.Protocol < 4 Then         objShell.Popup _         "You must be running a more current version of Skype"     Else        ' Build and send the chat command        strChatCmd = "CHAT CREATE " + Join(arrUsers, ", ")        If Right(strChatCmd, 2) = ", " Then            strChatCmd = Mid(strChatCmd, 1, Len(strChatCmd)-2)         End If          strResult = objSkypeAPI.SendBlockingCommand(strChatCmd)         ' Parse the result string to get the chat ID          sparts = Split(strResult, " ")         objSkypeAPI.SendBlockingCommand _         "CHATMESSAGE " + sparts(1) + " " + strMessage         ' [Optional] Comment out if you don't want to open          ' the chat window          objSkypeAPI.SendBlockingCommand "OPEN CHAT " + sparts(1)     End If End If 

As listing a large number of recipients on the command line can be both tedious and error prone, perhaps a better method is to wrap chat.vbs in a batch filesay, team_chat.batas shown here (enter the chat script command and its parameters as one, long, continuous line in the batch file). That way, you can simply invoke it at a command prompt, like this: team_chat "Progress meeting, 4 p.m. today, room 101".

 REM File: team_chat.bat chat /u=TeamMember1 /u=TeamMember2   /u=TeamMember3 /u=TeamMember4 /u=TeamMember4 /u=TeamMember6…/u=TeamMemberN %1