My own Email Notification System

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atticusewig
Member
Posts: 308
Joined: Fri Jan 19, 2007 9:48 am

My own Email Notification System

#1

Post by atticusewig »

We used to use the built-in notification system of
the ward website for Calendar items, but have
switched over to our own system, for two reasons:

1) To relieve the burden placed on Church servers
to send out all of these emails.

2) To get enhanced functionality that our website
members have clamored for, that are best solved
on computers I can fully access.

Here's how it works:

1) I see that there is a Calendar request pending approval,
so I go to that page. If there are no notifications set to
be sent, I just go through the standard approval process
(making sure it is spelled correctly, isn't critical of Church
Leadership, etc.)

2) If there are notifications, I make note of them, and then uncheck
them all. I also copy the details of the event to a temporary area
usually an open text editor. Then I approve the event.

3) Next, I click on the Email Broadcast Page, and click to notify
the groups I made note of earlier. I then click Preview message.

4) On the Preview Message page, there is a list of all the email addresses
who are to be notified. I choose the "View Source" of the page and
copy it to the clipboard. I won't be sending it from the website, so
I close the Admin screen.

5) Then I run a batch file I made. This is what this batch file does:
a) It grabs all the email addresses out of the windows clipboard
b) It then compare this to a text file of email addresses that are known to
be wrong or bounce, and removes these from the list.
c) the final list is written to a textfile that my Email Broadcast Program can use.

6) I open my Email Program, load that email list that was just created, and Copy and
paste in the message that I had copied to the temporary text editor window earlier.

7) I click send, and my mail program churns out the notification emails to the people.

Here are the advantages,

1) No bounces, my blacklist removes problem emails from the list.

2) Much faster delivery to the website members. Try using the Church
email notification system on a Sunday. It will get to the members before
Wednesday, but not always by much. There are just too many people in line.

3) No annoying "For more information, go to the Ward Website" messages that
contain no real information. People in my ward with mobile-based internet
access really like all the information to be sent via email, because then they
don't have to use www access that costs more, or is just plain clunky.
Dialup users like it, because it saves them time.

Just thought I'd share are system for email notification of ward website calendar
events.

- Atticus Ewig
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