Configuring triggered emails

Squiz Matrix Support
1

Our intranet has a New Message facility that creates a new standard page with the message content. There is a trigger in place which can send out an email to all staff to indicate a new message is now available. However there has been feedback from high up that they want the email to contain the message contents to ensure all staff see it (the concern is they won't be interested enough to follow the link to the Latest Message page).


From what I can find out there is no way to configure the Send Email portion of the trigger to automatically pull in the message content. We're using 3.10.1 (software updates need to be tested and passed by security before we can roll out into production), and I understand that there is a beta with improved email configurability for the workflow emails. Does this enhancement also include being able to configure the triggered emails as well? What version would we need to aim to roll out to have this capability?



Or is there a workaround that will achieve the same end result (a trigger to take the page contents of the latest message as soon as its published and include it in the body of an email that is automatically sent out)?



Or will we need to look at developing this?



cheers



steve

2

An RSS feed is more appropriate for what your trying to do, and you could do this in MySource Matrix assuming three things:

  1. Your users have access to an RSS feeder (eg. Thunderbird does RSS feeds)
  2. Your users know how to subscribe to RSS feeds
  3. Your users actually want to subscribe to this feed (ie. it's something they would normally do on their own, rather than being forced to receive these emails)
3

Unfortunately we don't have RSS readers (most staff aren't able to install anything and getting a reader approved and rolled out in the standard desktop builds is not likely to be achievable).


The message actually has to reach all staff (more than 5,000 of them), its not really an option. Many senior staff only use email (blackberry) so it does need to go out via email, and some overseas posts are unable to get to the intranet.



Currently one person sends the message and then either has to redo it in the CMS or someone else picks up the email and puts it in the CMS. Either way its more efficient if human work only has to be done once in the CMS and it posts to the intranet and sends the email. It's something we need to try to resolve quickly, the RSS option couldn't be done quickly unfortunately.



Thanks for the suggestion though, I've been considering good uses for RSS and maybe get the ball rolling on implementing RSS support in the department and this would definitely be suitable.



cheers



Steve

4

I would recommend looking at the Bulkmail package – it does exactly what you're after (i.e. sending page content to lots and lots of users).

5

Hm…not sure if we have that or not. Will check it out next week. We only need it to send to a single email address though (essentially an alias for the complete mail list, saves us having to try to maintain an up to date mail list ourselves).


Thanks again!

6

[quote]Hm…not sure if we have that or not. Will check it out next week. We only need it to send to a single email address though (essentially an alias for the complete mail list, saves us having to try to maintain an up to date mail list ourselves).
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You should have the Bulkmail package (if not, its pretty easy to add). It doesn’t matter if you’re sending to a single email, or thousands – the functionality I think you’d most benefit from is the ability to send the content of any standard page asset in Matrix. This would then make things a lot simpler than having to modify the trigger email content every time.

7

I don't think Bulkmail is going to do what you are after. You would need a trigger action to send the bulkmail as soon as the message is created to get the functionality required. That is not how bulkmail works at the moment, so the Send Email trigger action is exactly what you are after.


However, there is no keyword for the contents of a page, and no additional keyword in any new version (that I can see) that is going to do what you are after.



So either way, I think you'd require development to get the message contents into an email when the message is created.

8

Shame, together they have what we want :slight_smile: Hopefully it wouldn't be too hard to develop. I'll have an experiment when I'm back in the office if we have Bulkmail installed…if it could be manually triggered (eg click on "Send Email Now") it could be suitable.


Currently there is a Create Message process that takes the user through creating, editing and making Live, so having a button at the make live stage that manually triggers an email would do the trick.



cheers, go have a nice long weekend :slight_smile:



steve