Can't get Action Based mailings to work :-(

[doubledutch]

Hi,

I seem to have encountered a problem using OpenEMM 5.5.1 which I have difficultly getting my head around. What I want to do is send users, then they are subscribed to a new mailing list by setting a binding (I use webservices to do this) and Welcome email. What I have configured to do this is:

a) I've created an Action Based Mailing, linked to the correct Mailing List (no campaign) - and activated it

b) I've created an Action with the following settings:

- Name / description (anything..)
- Usage "for links only" (is this correct?)
- Step 1: "Send Actionbased mailing"
- Mailing (the correct mailing list..)
- Delay 1 hour

I can see from the recipient list that new members are added to the mailing list but the delivery statistics remain zero. How can I debug what's going on ? What is the logic used by OpenEMM to determine if an email should be generated or have I done something wrong in the above configuration?

I would appreciate your help

Thanks

Leon

[maschoff]

An action "only for links" means that you can attach this action only to links (tab "trackable links" in mailings), but not to forms.

What I do not understand from your description: How do you want to trigger the action?

[doubledutch]

Hi Ma,

Thanks for your reply and I think your question about "triggers" is the issue I am struggling with. The simple thing I want to do is:

- I "bind" a recipient to a mailing list using the Webservices
- An hour later - I want to send them a "welcome" email

Having read section 9 and 11 (many times) of the user manual I am just not sure how to do that. My assumption was that:

a) I create an action based mailing (and activate it)
b) Create an "Action" which triggers this. I was trying different things last night based on the descriptions I could find and created an action with 2 steps which are

1) Subscribe (I was hoping that would "trigger" when a user subscribes)
2) Send an Action based email (which I was hoping would send the email)

That didn't work either so I must be missing a step somewhere which is indeed the trigger you are referring to.

A suggestion on how to do this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Leon

[maschoff]

You can trigger an action based mailing in 2 ways:

- either via a link cklick
- or via a pre- or post-form action (i.e. an action executed before or after a form is called and displayed)

Alternatively, you can set up a date based mail which is triggered by a target group. An exmaple: If you create a target group like "creation_date = sysdate -1" all newly imported or created subscribers receive this date based mail one day later.

That's all I can offer for now.

[doubledutch]

Hi Ma; again thanks.

I don't use any forms or links (I think...) as we collect emails from our database and register them through the webservices. None of the users every see an OpenEMM webpage. Does that mean I can not use the first 2 options?

Also is there an "systime -1 hour" option as well as sysdate?

Thanks

Leon

[maschoff]

Nope. But you can tweak the source code, of course ...

[doubledutch]

Where do I start looking? Happy to have a got at it...

[doubledutch]

Is there a document which lists things like the "sysdate" options?

[maschoff]

No, but there is only "sysdate", nothing else.

[doubledutch]

"Only sysdate" OK - I can remember that list

I tried to create the target definition for creation_date = sysdate -1 but the form seems to ignore the -1 bit. Instead I get a column: YYYYMMDD etc. Is that OK or am I still messing things up?

[doubledutch]

Ma; I still can't get my "sysdate -1" to work. It seems to loose it when I type it into the form... Do I have to do this directly into the database?

thanks again.

leon

[maschoff]

Sorry, I was wrong. It is not "sysdate" (Oracle, our commercial version) but "current_timestamp" (MySQL). I have to look into the code to find out how to add or substract days from current_timestamp. It is not as easy as with Oracle.

[doubledutch]

Hi Ma; Current_timestamp should do the trick. Are you suggesting I can put any "SQL" in the expression field? E.g.

date_add(now(),interval -1 hour)

Is valid (ish) mysql for an hour ago. Would that work?

Thanks

Leon

[maschoff]

An expression like "current_timestamp -1" does not work. This is a bug which was posted to the SourceForge bugtracker at

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.p ... tid=848488

If you are interested in a patch, please monitor this entry to learn when a patch file is available. Thank you!

[hannahgu]

I would like to send out transactional emails as detailed by DoubleDutch earlier in this thread.

Is this now possible to achieve in the newest version of OpenEMM?

Thanks,
Hannah