emailing list of contacts not changing the firstname in list

ignore the text type in subject line !

Styeven

I can't believe I missed that!

Sometimes you can't see the wodd for the trees!

Thank you for the casting the fresh pair of eyes over the script.

One day and I do mean one day I will manage to help you in return !!!

kind regards

Mel 

Steven

I want to limit the above script to a batch of 75 records at a time

what's the best approach to achive this?

I've tried couple of things like example further below but whilst the script is accepted it ignores it at run time.

I'm guessing the condition of select, where and do it literally working through all files

let myC := 1

then adding 

for recipient in select Customers where 'GDPR Status' = 1 and 'Send Email' and myC <75 do

the adding further down

let myC := myC +1 etc

Hi Steven

Thank you - I haven't tried the other options at the botton co I can't get past an error

let sendmails := select Customers where 'GDPR Status' = 1 and 'Send Email' and Emailsend = false;
let myCount := if cnt(sendmails) > 75 then 75 else cnt(sendmails);
for i in range (0, myCount) do

this line in bold is giving me a field not fount error (col 26)

seems to think that myCount is a field and not a variable as defined in line 2

My 'Send Email' Field is a yes/no flag to add extra control over the gdpr status (so if both are true send the email out) then set send email to false

So is your extra Emailsend (yes/no) field needed ?

cheers Mel

Fred/Steven

This is really getting there !

There is just a small issue in that it was now giving me an error in as shown the bold lines below as they are no longer recognised

ie was previous refering to by following line (recipient variable)

for recipient in select Customers where 'GDPR Status' = 1 and 'Send Email' do

ah - I though maybe then I need to replace recipient for sendmails?

tried this all it works BUT if grabs every email due to go and sneds it to every one - so say there is a batch of 6 emails - it sends 6 emails with each name added to the send to address box 

so technically 36 emails were send out and each contact got 6 emails all saying the same with all contacts visable in the sent to box

so clearly that is not right - although I am not sure how to correct this ? Somehow i still need to define recipient and not have the loop?

 it send this 6 times to each group!

let sendmails := (select Customers where 'GDPR Status' = 1 and 'Send Email' and EmailSend = true);
let myCount := if cnt(sendmails) > 75 then 75 else cnt(sendmails) end;
for i in range(0, myCount) do
let thisBody := first((select SystemFile).FollowUpLetter);
let myEmail := userEmail();
let xFirst := item(sendmails, i).FirstName;
let myAtt := first(files(record(SystemFile,1)));
thisBody := replace(thisBody, "{FirstName}", xFirst);
item(sendmails, i).(EmailSend := true);
sendEmail({
from: myEmail,
to: recipient.Email,
subject: "Thank you for past purchases from 118Printgroup, but did you know we print much more?",
text: "from 118 Printgroup",
html: thisBody,
attachments: myAtt
});
recipient.('Send Email' := 0)
end

Fred

I used stevens last example. He removed the recipient from the definition and left it in further down - so i did the same.

I've stripped the code back to remove the attachments etc that I know works (I'll add code back later) just to show show where I am (i've changed the recipients variable to myPost (just for abit of clarity).

let myPost := (select Customers where 'GDPR Status' = 1 and EmailSend = true); This line works (if there are 6 value in the list it selects all 6)

let myCount := if cnt(myPost) > 3 then 3 else cnt(myPost) end; (this definately selects only 3 emails to send out)
for i in range(0, myCount) do
let myEmail := userEmail();
let xFirst := item(myPost, i).FirstName;
item(myPost, i).(EmailSend := false);
sendEmail({
all this section works - so no issue here
});
myPost.(EmailSend := 0)
end

but what actually happens is that 3 emails are sent but all 6 vaild emails are attached to each of the 3 emails

so in this case each email copy to 6 users - giving 18 emails gone out

I'm confused now !!!!

if i move this line from the middle and put it at the end

item(myPost, i).(EmailSend := false)

then the script correctly detects 3 email to go out and sets the correct qty of the EmailSend flag back to false instead of all 6 in the list.

but the actual email going out then does not work at all :-(

So in essence !!

The counter is picking up the first email then adding all the valid emails into that first email then moving onto counter 2 and doing the the same

I'm struggling to see how I can break down the select query line so that it only get one email at at time. Obviously without the counter lines added -  The script ran fine.

Albiet - I would have to manually run down the table view, setting 'EmailSend' to true for the amount I want to go out in a batch.

But given that I have over 600k customer records and to then manually set 75 at a time would be quite an undertaking!

Hi John

YAY !! - That works !!! 

For testing - I changed the 75 to a batch of 3. Fired it off twice - It did exactly what you said it would and effectively walks down the list.

That's great because across all my customers list. I can set a sensible batch per day and simply fire the button off when I'm ready.

Alsi I can now set the table view to sort descending on sendemail and i wil always know where i am.

Once the list is walked through I can do a table update with a contant value to reset sendmail. 

Thanks for this :-)

What does slice do?

Fred/Steven

I would still like to get my head around the counter/select though please to see if a solution is still possible this way.

I need to understand how the counter was trying to count but then including all the email in the sedning then mnovining onto count 2 then doing the same.

I really appreciate the time and support you guys give me! - THANKYOU! 

Kind regards

Mel

ah John

Got it - slice is a method used with strings to return all characters after a start position or between 2 points

that's a new one learned !!

John/Fred/Steven

Thank you for various explanations. That really helps !

As stated before, I'm not a coder in any way but see it as a task to do in order to drive my business. That said I have progressed quite some way.

This issue for me (and I guess many others!) is that I don't know - what I don't know!.

Hope that makes sense so when faced with some problems. I can full state it in English how to work through the problem, but transfering that into code/script can be problematical when a) You have no model to base it on. B) You don't have the knowledge of all the scripts etc.

As with most things it relys on experience gained with Practise, Understanding and Feedback.

You guys help make that process easier ! - Thank you as ever :-)

P.s Although I know I have the solution now. I'm going to carry on see if I can get the script working fully using the counter method.