Emailing a Confirmation

Overview of Sending

Set all the fields as desired. In particular, enter the message if any (at most 50,000 characters). You can send a personalized message as described in the next section. You can also see how it will be filled in, by clicking on the Preview button. When satisfied with everything, click on the Send button (or if on the Customize Message page, the Update button).

If a recipient's email address is not a real address, there is no way to inform you immediately. Instead the From address will eventually receive a report saying the message could not be delivered. Depending on how the address is bad, the report may come from the Mail System or directly from PRESTO. When the latter case occurs, the report's subject will start with PR:send error and end with the error actually reported by the Mail System.

Because the From and Reply-to addresses can be roles (e.g. Chair 2), it is possible there will be no person (or email address) for that role when PRESTO actually sends a message. When this happens, the other address is set to the specified one. If both are absent, they are sent to the sending administrator if applicable and the webmaster's email address if not.

Inserting Per-recipient Info and other Generic Content

To do this, use the dropdown menus underneath the message box. You can do this for the message or the subject. To do it for the Subject, click in the Subject's text box first.

For an overview of this feature, click here. The aspects important or unique to auto-messages are as follows.

Signup Info

Inserting each recipient's->This Signup inserts a description of the signup for which this message is a confirmation or notification.

Inserting each recipient's->Signups inserts all of this person's signups (i.e. it is not context-sensitive as it is for announcements). This gives you a way to signup someone for several things at once and send just one confirmation message:

• Set Policy to Allow You to Edit.
• Click on Don't Send for each confirmation but the last.
• Put !p.signups! rather than !p.signup! in the message if you have not already done so.
• If necessary, tweak your normal message to account for the fact that multiple signups were done at once.
• Click on Send for last message.

Titles

Let's assume your auto-messages end with:

Thank you,
Jane Smith
Event Chair

Suppose Jane retires and someone takes her place. Now you have to go back and fix each such message. You can avoid this nuisance upfront by using the Insert dropdown menus to select Insert staff info->Chair1's Name — rather than typing Jane Smith — when you first create the messages.