One of the complications of WebTV is the inability to send or receive notices. As a result, most of the message you receive from NickServ/ChanServ, and from bots, are invisible to you. Some networks have added a WebTV service, which can relay messages back and forth between user and ChanServ, while others have dedicated entire servers for WebTV use.

Until recently, however, there has been no way to receive notices from bots. This document details how to set up your bot to work with WebTV. Let's assume you have the bot Aries in your channel, and Aries isn't responding to any of the commands you issue.

1. The first thing you need to do is make sure the bot recognises you. To do this, issue the ident command.

Example:  /msg Aries ident hereiam
 

2. Since you can't tell whether the command was successful, you will need to issue a command in the channel which the bot will answer to. For this purpose, we have the access command. If the identification was successful, it should report your access level in the channel. Type the following command:

Aries access
 

3. If you have forgotten your password, you will need to come to #BotHouse so that somebody can change it for you. Let's assume, however, that the command was successful,  The next thing that you need to do is login to your bot.

Example:    /msg Aries login hereiam
 

4. Once that's done, and the bot is listening, issue the following command:

Aries set output msg

If all went according to plan, the bot will send you a private message saying "Output option set to msg". If it did, mission accomplished! Your bot will send you messages in a query window from now on. If not, you will need to ask in #BotHouse for help.