The Mass Email feature allows you to send an email to
all or some of the contacts in the Address Book. First, you must
design an email in HTML or text format. Next, a set of contacts
is selected (using a saved Address Book report) and the mailing is scheduled.
The FootPrints scheduler service sends the email to all contacts
in the report in small batches (using your email server), ensuring the
process runs smoothly. When all of the emails are sent, a confirmation
email is sent to the initiator of the mailing.
To use this feature:
Create the desired
email text in any text or HTML editor and save the file with either a
.txt or .html extension.
Optionally create
an Address Book report to retrieve the contacts desired for the mailing
under Report
on the Address Book Toolbar. You must save and name the report.
For example, to send the email to a certain department or company, select
that department or company in the appropriate search field. To retrieve
all contacts, no report is necessary.
Select Administration
| Mass Email from the Address Book Toolbar. The following
options can be selected:
Select
the time for the mailing—Options
include send
immediately and specify
date and time. For large mailing, we recommend scheduling
the process after hours.
Select
Recipients—The
email can be sent to all contacts in the current Address Book or to a
subset of the contacts based on an Address Book report.
Optionally
force breaks between batches of mail—Select
a length of time here for batches of mail to be sent between the breaks.
For example, to send mail continually for one minute, then take a break,
then continue sending mails for another minute, select 1
minute. A break length between fifteen seconds and one hour
can be selected. This feature is recommended if escalations and
incoming emails are also being handled by the FootPrints service
for Windows and to minimize the web server load (Windows and UNIX).
For each break, the mailing process ends and then restarts for the next
period.
Select
message format—Options
include text,
HTML,
and Mixed
text and HTML. If Mixed
text and HTML is selected, both text and HTML files can be included
in the mass email.
“From”
name for outgoing email—This
is the name that is displayed in the recipients’ inboxes on the email.
“Reply”
address—This
is the reply address used for the mailing.
Subject—This is the
subject of the mail.
Upload
Text File—If
text
or Mixed
text and HTML was selected above, upload the text file from your
local machine using the Browse
button.
Upload
HTML File—If
HTML
or Mixed
text and HTML was selected above, upload the HTML file using the
Browse
button.
Upload
Attachments (optional)—Optionally
include one or more attachments (up to five) to be included with the emails.
To schedule the mailing,
click the GO button. If the preview checkbox
is checked, you receive a preview of the email.
To see a list of
mailings scheduled or to delete a mailing from the queue, click the link
in the Select
Time for Mass Mailing section of the administration page.
Additional configuration options that apply to all mass
mailings from all Address Books can be found under Administration
| System | Email | Configure Mail on the FootPrints
Toolbar. The following two options are available:
Batch
size—Defaults
to 100. Select the batch size of emails to be sent at once (between
10 and 1000).
Length
of Delay in seconds—Select
1–10
seconds. This delay is in addition to the breaks configured above
for each mass emailing. This delay occurs between batches and is
useful in giving the email server a rest between batches. This delay
does not stop the FootPrints process itself on the FootPrints
server, it only pauses the emails actually being sent to the email server.
To stop the process at intervals (to give the server
a rest and to allow other FootPrints processes, such as escalation,
to run), configure breaks on the Mass
Email Administration page as described above.
After a mass emailing is completed, a confirmation email
is sent to the initiator. If a problem occurs with a scheduled mailing,
it goes to the bottom of the queue, which can be viewed from the link
mentioned in Step 5 above. Use the delay and break options provided
to ensure that regular processing is not interrupted on the FootPrints
and email servers.
Mass Mail Encoding
When creating messages for a mass mailing in a program
such as Microsoft Word, the files may contain non-ASCII characters when
they are exported to HTML or text. This
can cause the some characters in the message to be garbled when it is
sent in a mass mailing because FootPrints
expects the message be in UTF-8 encoding and characters exported in this
manner might be saved in a local encoding, such as ISO-8859.
If you create a mass mailing message in a program that
is not using UTF-8 encoding, or you are unsure as to what encoding the
program is using, you can use the following procedure to make sure that
the message is in the correct encoding before it is sent:
Open the HTML file
using the Notepad application.
Select File
| Save as.
In the Save
as pop-up, select the Encoding
drop-down. ANSI
should be pre-selected in the drop-down.
Change ANSI
to UTF-8.
Save the file.
Use the file you
saved as UTF-8 for the mass mailing message.