The H2OS Notes Sending Machine (NSM) is an optional add-on feature that takes H2OS's basic email sending capability to the next level: selecting multiple recipients, formatting with text substitution, and sending email notes immediately or per your schedule, once or many times..
The NSM is job centric. That is, to use this feature you must define a job first. The job consists of record selection criteria, the boilerplate email note to be sent, and the scheduled date/time for the e-mailing to be sent.
Once a job is setup, it can be run immediately or scheduled for running at a later time/date. It can also be setup to use the H2OS Batch Machine to automatically repeat sending e-mail jobs, each job selecting and using then-current data, such as job dates.
To launch the NSM, select Email -> Notes sending machine on the menu:
The Notes Sending Machine screen consists of a pageframe with 5 pages, each for a different aspect of email job management.
The NSM is organized around the concept of 'jobs. Each job has a unique job name, uses a message in the messages library, and a record selection command to select customers for participation in the mailing.
A table in the H2OS database (emailjobs.dbf) serves as a "jobs library" and contains 1 record for each defined job.
Once a job is setup, you can pick and run it at any time. If you have the Batch Machine feature installed, you can also schedule email jobs to run automatically in the future.
NSM:
Helps you to setup and manage your email
jobs
Helps you to manage your email notes library
Helps you to manage your record selection
commands
Performs textmerge substitution using data in
your H2OS database , if used
Selects recipients by any criteria there is data
to support
Sends plain text or HTML format email notes using
Outlook or (included) SMTP email transmissions
Optionally prints mailing labels, form letters
or post cards for selected recipients without email addresses ("leftovers")
Can be used to schedule email jobs on a schedule
In this example, we will send schedule confirmation reminders each Thursday to customers with jobs scheduled for "next week" (within the next 7 days from 'today', with 'today' being the date the mailing is sent).
To setup this job:
1. create a model email note with the text
and data substitutions needed for this purpose,
2. create a record
selection command that retrieves database records for customers with
work scheduled "next week" (within the next 7 days)
3. give this job a unique name in your notes
library, such as "send schedule confirmation reminders" (if
this name has not been used already, else use a different variation)
4. schedule this job to be run every Thursday morning
Until you are comfortable and familiar with this process, we suggest you click the JOB PREVIEW command and look over the emails that setup and ready for sending.
When you are comfortable with the emailing, click SEND NOW on this screen, or the SCHED command button for a given job, to add the job to the schedule.
We want to send notes by email, for the obvious benefits, when possible, but because we don't always have email addresses for all recipients, this feature lets us use email for recipients we have email addresses for, and printed materials for the rest.