TOPIC:

Added a couple of new settings for the Email Agenda feature:

The first lets you send agenda emails just to members that do not yet have a role for the meeting of interest


The second is a new option to exclude members from Agenda Emails who are in the system as not attending for the meeting of interest.


These are really intended to be used together, but the second could also be used in other scenarios. I am of the opinion that if a member states that they will not attend a particular meeting, then you should probably not be sending them agendas for that meeting. I had thought about just "baking" that into the code (enforcing that), but different clubs work differently, so I made it a new option instead.

You're a hard working sensible man and I appreciate it.

The people that get sent an email with both of these checked might be people to contact personally. Is there a way to print out the To: list?

Uh-oh. I checked both boxes and sent an email. I am confirmed as GE and attending but I received the email!

marc33 wrote:

You're a hard working sensible man and I appreciate it.

The people that get sent an email with both of these checked might be people to contact personally. Is there a way to print out the To: list?

Say more please....

marc33 wrote:

Uh-oh. I checked both boxes and sent an email. I am confirmed as GE and attending but I received the email!

Ok, let me check that.

marc33 wrote:

Uh-oh. I checked both boxes and sent an email. I am confirmed as GE and attending but I received the email!

Ok, thanks for the heads up... this should be working now.

Thanks for all of your hard work updating the options for FreeToastHost! I use it frequently to keep 4 clubs going. I would like to suggest that when one selects a "Send" option other than "All Club Members", that the default revert back to "All Club Members". Sometimes I want to e-mail the latest updated agenda to myself (as VPE) only, before I forward the agenda to the "guests" or "prospects" distribution list. Then I forgot that my "send" button was not set on "All Club Members". Subsequently, I received the e-mail that I thought I had sent to "All Club Members", but in actuality, it was only I that had received the e-mail (set from the previous time) , and I had no way of realizing that I had made this error. Consequently my club members never received my reminder e-mail about the meeting. Only I had received it. Nina Chace, BioReliance Speak! Toastmasters Club # 1763170

NinaChace:

I am not really sold on any kind of forcing the settings to a particular value (other than the last value used). Most clubs will likely just use the same settings over and over and that is what the current design is intended to support.

I have considered doing some sort of "Preview" button to verify what gets sent before actually doing the send... Nothing done on that though as of yet.

I like the idea of a preview button - I've sent something to the wrong group (twice ).

There is currently a warning if you choose to omit the actual agenda. Perhaps that could be enhanced to say "confirm settings". Just those words might be enough to make the user realise that they need to be checked/changed, or even better if they can be listed.

Possible to add the Prospects email address to the list of potential recipients? Nina mentioned the process of sending the email to myself so that I can forward it on to the Prospects list; would be nice to eliminate that step. Preview would be doubly useful in this case, to know for sure who it's going to before hitting the final "SEND"!

Thanks for everything; great work Steve!

Mbene828go wrote:

Possible to add the Prospects email address to the list of potential recipients? Nina mentioned the process of sending the email to myself so that I can forward it on to the Prospects list; would be nice to eliminate that step. Preview would be doubly useful in this case, to know for sure who it's going to before hitting the final "SEND"!

Thanks for everything; great work Steve!

We will never support sending the agenda to non-members with built-in functionality... In other words, we have no intention of adding functionality for that as the agenda is really intended for members and if we supported sending it to non-members it would create a very real risk of the system being listed as a spammer which we simply cannot have. If you come up with a way to forward the agenda to non-members from your email address, that is on you, since the agenda would be coming from your email address. (and you assume the risk then)

Hm, I see what you're saying. Maybe it's unique for each club (and so only possible to do as you've described), but our Prospects list (generated by FTH...prospects-[club#]@toastmastersclubs.org) includes guests who've requested info through the website, and/or are regular/semi-regular guests to our meetings. So we try to be sure they get the agendas too.

Are you saying the risk of the system being listed as a spammer is higher (than automated emails to members only) simply because they haven't agreed to be Toastmasters? And so they might manually flag it as spam?

Mbene828go wrote:

Are you saying the risk of the system being listed as a spammer is higher (than automated emails to members only) simply because they haven't agreed to be Toastmasters? And so they might manually flag it as spam?

A member has signed an agreement and paid money, and generally they will expect communications to include email. There is no such agreement with a non-member. And yes, they may flag something as spam as opposed to clicking the Unsubscribe link that we provide.

We do support sending to non-members via the lists. However, even with that, we are very aware of risk that the system being listed as a spammer. This is *not* just some paranoid, conceptual concern... it is *very real* (without getting into specifics). We carefully consider every email mechanism that allows emails to go to non-members... we are concerned about the potential for sending unwanted emails and the potential for abuse.

The sender address for the email matters since that is what will get flagged as the spammer's address. Most emails sent via FTH have to list the system email address (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) as the sender address for email security reasons. (It is the reply to address that really makes a lot of our emails possible. )

Bottom Line: We are aware of risks that you are probably not aware of, and for that reason, there are certain limitations in the system that we are unlikely to remove.

SteveTheTechie wrote:

The sender address for the email matters since that is what will get flagged as the spammer's address. Most emails sent via FTH have to list the system email address (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) as the sender address for email security reasons. (It is the reply to address that really makes a lot of our emails possible.

This also why I added the "Is this SPAM?" feature for incoming emails to publicly accessible email addresses (e.g. officer aliases). If the member inadvertently added the senders address to their email client's spam filter using its mechanism, the server address would get added, not the real sender, since all email through FTH has the server address as the From (has to).