Setting up the WackyB Spoken Status / Status Alert Yahoo! Messenger Plugin

The WackyB Spoken Status / Status Alert Plug-in is a tab plugin, as such it's accessible directly below your friends list on your main messenger window.

Loading the Plug-in
If the plugin isn't showing, click on the Add Plug-ins button directly below your friends list
the Plug-ins Manager window opens, scroll down the list until you see Spoken Status / Alert and click on the Start button

now close the Plug-ins Manager.
You should now see Spoken Status Alert directly below your friends list...

Status Alert Instructions...
On the Main screen (plugin window) that loads there are 4 main areas...


1) Last status display: Shows the last status change (online/offline/busy,idle,message change) along with an icon at the end to show the last status ( Tip: Hold your mouse over the status icon at the end to view the time of this status change :)
The users ID and avatar/photo is also displayed
.

2) Mute Sounds: Clicking this text will toggle a tick mark in the mute sounds box to the left. When this box is ticked all sounds (including peedy) are muted (no sound), This is great for if you are on the phone etc and just want to kill them temporarily

3) Setup Alerts: This opens up the control center for configuring all the sound options you can imageine (full details further down this page :)

4) View Logs: Click this text...

to open up a secondary window (Status Log Window) with a time log of all the status changes that have occured since the plug-in was started.

Note: this log is cleared every time you close Spoken Status / Alert

Setting up Alerts...
To access the set-up screen click on ::Setup Alerts::

Default Alerts...
The Default Alerts settings are split into 4 tabs for the different alert types (OnLine, OffLine, Status Change, New Message);

The default settings are used for all the users unless you configure an individual user later which can overide these defaults (details below).

Click the Custom Alerts Tab at the top, each settings tab looks alike and gives you the following options:

1) No Sound: Turn off sounds for this type of alert (you can override this for an individual user later)

2) Select From Library: Selecting this option you can pick from a range of sounds we and Yahoo! Inc. have provided for you, use the drop down list to select the sound of your choice. Click the Test button next to this option to preview the sound.

3) Custom: This is the best part... Select this option to let you browse for your own sound files on your computer, They can be any sound type (mp3,wav,wma,etc..) in fact not just sound files but any file that contains sounds.. so that means you can browse to a video file (mpg,avi,mov,etc..) and just the sound from these files will be used. Click the Change button first then the Browse button that is enabled.
Select your sound file and click the Test button to make sure it sounds ok :) You can select how many seconds of the file are played by clicking the option below the browse button.

That's all there is to configuring the sound options, Each tab is the same for the other event types (OnLine, OffLine, Status Change, New Message). Make sure you hit the Save button at the bottom right when you are done to save the settings.
Tip:Also make sure you select the correct sound option, if you have picked a sound from the library but the selection is on Custom, you wont hear the sound you expected! ;)

4) Speech with Peedy

If you have setup your speech settings correctly, you can get Peedy to speak the status changes of your friends to you! this is great if you are away from your computer etc. Simply tick or untick the box for each alert type to set the default for speech, the plugin uses the users Yahoo! ID when it announces the status change but you can configure this for each user in the custom user alerts.
If you help setting up Peedy see this article for Microsoft Agent download links and instructions.

WackyB Spoken Status Alert requires Microsoft Agent and the Microsoft Agent Character "Peedy"

Tips: • If Peedy is in your way he's easily relocated to a different place on your screen, just click (and hold) then drag him to a new position then release your mouse.
• If you need to quickly halt Peedy's speech output just click once on him once, he will stop speaking / reading out the status change / alert.

Custom User Alerts...

This is where it gets really exciting, you can set different sounds and alerts for each of your friends. Maybe you have new message window alerts switched off by default but still want to know when someome special has sent you a message? Or someone is constantly changing their status that you want to mute alerts for!
Click the Custom User Alerts tab at the top, you now have to pick a friend (you do have friends yes? :) click a friends ID from your friends list, you should see that users ID appear next to the tab at the top and also the save button at the bottom.


Custom User Sound: For the sounds it's very similar to the default settings...
Setting up the custom sounds for individual friends is the same as setting the default (documented above this section under Default Alerts) the additional Use Default option just means you do not want to configure that alert type for this user so it will use the main default options you have already set up.

You don't need to set this to Use Default for each friend on your list, it's done automatically for you, you only need to edit the settings if you wish to have custom sounds or speech for individual friends. If you do select a different sound for any or all of the alert types (OnLine, OffLine, Status Change, New Message), it will be that sound which is played for that particular user ID only and not the default. Make sure you click the Save button once you have configured all your sounds for that user ID
Note: if you click a new user from your friends list before you click Save, your settings will be lost for the previous user.

Custom User Speech with Peedy: From here you can turn off speech for an individual user ID, continue to use the default settings... or configure a different name to be read. This last option is usefull if your friends ID is complex or long and lets you remove underscore and capital letters that can cause Peedy to pronounce things incorrectly. You can configure the name to be spoken for each alert type (OnLine, OffLine, Status Change, New Message) although you will probably copy the same name to each once you have what you want.

Mute Settings...
Mute Settings tab can be found at the far right tab under the Default Alerts tab.

Here you can setup the plugin sounds to be muted under certain conditions. If you dont want any sound alerts or peedy to disturb you when you are busy or idle you can set the options to mute when either busy or idle or both. You can also configure the opposite, maybe you only want the alert sounds when you are busy and away from your computer but not when you are available. You can configure any of these options here or simply leave the to always on (No Change).
Don't want speech? If not then you can untick this box which will prevent Peedy from loading up with your plugin, speech functions can be configured and saved but not previewed or heard when this option is not selected.

That's about it, check out our site for the latest updates (a Beta release is already available with new customised sounds for new Yahoo Mail alerts here). Don't forget the the donation page to help support the development of this and the many other utilites/plugins and add-ons provided free from WackyB; Without your support and generosity these will not be possible. We always welcome any comments/feedback on this or any new product ideas, for this or any other help you may need with this plugin or messengers in general dont forget to check out our forum http://www.wackyb.co.nz/vb

Have fun... :)