Defining the sender of an email job can take place at any point in the process of creating or editing a job. It is necessary, however, to have sender information added to a job before delivery testing so that authorization to deliver the message can take place.
Enter sender information from the Job Details screen by clicking on the Define Sender icon in the Workflow diagram or the
Edit link in the Sender section of the Summary diagram. Enter the sender information by loading a saved sender profile or typing in new information.
It is possible to use merge fields when entering sender information in the Email Address,
Sender Name, and
Reply-To Address text boxes, allowing you to create personalized values for each recipient. Merge field values are limited to those provided in the recipients’ definition and must follow the standard format (i.e. the field name proceeded by an ampersand “
&” and followed by a semi-colon “
;”).
Important: It is critically important that the sender and reply-to addresses resolve into authentic Internet email addresses when the merge fields have been replaced with corresponding data. Failing to provide a valid working email address violates the law in certain countries. It will also disable the reply functionality of the email, hurting the reputation of the sender. The user must verify that merged addresses are valid; LISTSERV Maestro cannot accomplish this.
See Section 6.9 Merge Fields and Conditional Blocks for more information on using merged fields. See the online help for examples of using this feature to personalize sender information.
Bounced email (email that is not accepted by the receiving mail server) can be handled automatically by LISTSERV or sent to another address supplied by the sender. If LISTSERV handles bounces, bounce details can be downloaded on the Job Summary screen. Bounces can also be retrieved from a file called
NOLIST-jobname.changelog, located in LISTSERV’s main directory.
If bounced mail is being sent to another address and not processed by LISTSERV, make sure that the address is a valid email address. Be aware that bounced mail not handled by LISTERV will
not be available for reporting purposes or for easy download. It will have to be collected from the other mailbox and processed accordingly.
Select either Handle bounced messages automatically or
Send bounced messages to. If
Send bounced messages is selected, then enter the address where you want the bounced messages to be sent.
LISTSERV Maestro allows you to use DomainKeys signatures to authenticate that the messages (sent for a specific email job) do indeed originate from the domain in the “From:” address. Major ISPs already check every incoming mail to see if it is signed with a valid DomainKeys signature. Once DomainKeys has become an accepted standard for message origin verification, the current policy of only informing the recipient about the DomainKeys verification result in an additional header entry may change, and an ISP may opt to not even deliver the message to the recipient or to mark it as coming from an unsure origin. Therefore, in order to achieve good deliverability, signing messages with a valid DomainKeys signature will become more important in the future.
If the administrator has enabled users or groups to have the ability to change the default DomainKeys signature settings, then the settings in the
DomainKeys Settings section will be active and you will be able to set the DomainKeys signature setting for each individual job.
If you want the email messages for this particular job to contain a DomainKey signature, then select the
Yes, sign messages option. If you do not want the email messages for this particular job to contain a DomainKey signature, then select the
No, don’t sign messages option.
Note: LISTSERV Maestro interacts with LISTSERV to determine if the supplied sender address is supported by one of the DomainKeys that were deployed to the LISTSERV host when DomainKeys were configured by the administrator. This check is performed at several stages during the life cycle of an email job, one of which is while defining a sender. The sender definition settings of an email job are only accepted as valid if either DomainKeys signatures are switched off (by selecting the
No, don’t sign messages option or clicking on the
Click to disable link) or if the check succeeds at the LISTSERV host that is configured for the account. If the email address is not accepted as valid, then an error message appears. If this happens, contact your administrator for assistance.
Advanced Sender Information Settings are disabled by default. Click the corresponding link to enable the advanced settings. Once enabled, the advanced settings can be disabled by clicking the disable link. Advanced Sender Information Settings allows user defined mail headers to be added to the end of the header part of the mail. These headers follow the X-Header convention as described in RFC822. The X-Headers will appear just before the actual mail content, and will appear in the order that they are entered on the screen.
To add an X-Header to a mail job, enter the name of the header, which must include the leading “X-” in to the
X-Header-Name column. Enter the text for the header in the
X-Header-Text column. Rows where both the name and text are empty are ignored. To remove a header, click the corresponding
Clear Row link. Click
Add Row to add additional headers.
If the system administrator has granted permission, it is possible to save any new sender information as a profile for future use. All saved sender profiles are available to all members of a group. The only required field is the sender’s email address, but including the sender name makes the message more personalized. Include a reply-to address if replies are an option for recipients and if the reply-to address is different from the sender’s email address. Click the
Save as Profile link once all the information is entered. The Save Sender as New Profile screen opens. Enter a title for the profile and click
[OK]. This saved profile will then be available in the
Load from Profile drop-down menu.
LISTSERV Maestro allows the user to send out an approved email job immediately on approval or schedule a job for future sending. Jobs can be scheduled to be delivered once or to repeat automatically over programmed intervals. Scheduling the delivery of a message can take place at any time during the creation of the email job; however, final delivery is still subject to delivery testing and delivery authorization.
The Delivery Settings screen opens with selections to schedule the delivery of a normal job that will be delivered once and not repeat. This is the default delivery scheduling format for LISTSERV Maestro.
Select the Deliver immediately when authorized or
Deliver at the following time option. If the job is scheduled for a future delivery date and time, enter the date and time in the edit boxes using the format displayed adjacent to each box. The date and time entered are dependent on the time zone selected from the drop-down selection box at the bottom of the screen. Local time is relative to the workstation accessing the job, and not the server running LISTSERV
Maestro.
Note: Time entered in the
Time field uses the “24 hour” format. For example, 08:00 would be 8 am and 20:00 would be 8 pm. See Appendix A:
24 Hour Clock Time Conversion Table for a table on converting from AM and PM times to their 24 hour equivalents.
Click [OK] to continue. Jobs scheduled for future sending will be available in the Ongoing Jobs list. It is possible to revoke the send authorization of a job up until the delivery time. This moves the job back into the Open Jobs list, for further editing. If a job is changed, test messages must be resent, and final approval will have to occur again before the job can be re-authorized.
In addition to the basic scheduling options described above, there are also advanced options available for defining the delivery schedule. The advanced options are disabled by default. The
Click to enable link expands the Delivery Settings screen. If you want to disable the advanced options later, use the
Click to disable link that appears when the advanced options screen is exposed. The advanced options are enabled or disabled on a per job basis.
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Deliver only once. Do not auto-repeat – With this option, the job will be delivered only once, at the delivery time specified in the basic options at the top of the screen. This is the default setting for delivery. It is also used when the advanced delivery options are disabled.
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Auto-repeat delivery of this job – With this option, the job will start an auto-repeat sequence upon delivery. The job will be delivered for the first time at the time specified in the basic options. Once the job has been delivered, an exact copy of it will automatically be created and authorized for delivery, with a delivery time that is scheduled at a given interval after the first delivery.
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Once this copy of the job has been delivered, another copy will be created and authorized, again with a scheduled delivery time that is offset from the previous delivery by the same interval, and so on, until the defined auto-repeat end-condition is met.
If this option is chosen, a delay interval must be supplied between each repeated delivery of a copy of the original job by entering a positive value into the
Delay interval between repeated deliveries field and choosing an appropriate time unit from the selection list. Choose between
Hours,
Days,
Weeks, and
Months. An end condition must be entered to stop the auto-repeat sequence. Select one of these options:
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Repeat until stopped manually – After each delivery, a new auto-repeat copy will always be created and authorized. This can only be stopped manually by selecting the latest copy, located in the Ongoing Jobs list awaiting delivery, and revoking its delivery authorization.
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Repeat until the following threshold time – With this option, specify the threshold date and time to stop the auto-repeat sequence. After each delivery, a new auto-repeat copy is created and authorized only if its designated delivery time (the time of the previous delivery plus the specified interval) is not later than the date and time specified here.
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To schedule the delivery of the A/B-split variant jobs, click on the Edit link in the
Delivery section of the A/B-Split Job Details screen. The A/B-Split Job Delivery Settings screen opens.
From this screen, you can schedule the delivery of the A/B-split variant jobs to take place immediately after authorization or at a future date and time relative to a selected time zone.
Notes: The delivery settings apply to all variant jobs equally, as does the authorization. This means that the A/B-split job can only be authorized when all variants have been completed (all four states of all variant jobs are complete and marked with the green checkmark). Once the A/B-split job is authorized, all variants are authorized (and will be delivered according to the delivery settings defined here). For information on authorizing the delivery, see Section 9.4
Authorizing the Delivery of an A/B-Split Job.
For an A/B-split job with sampling, there are two separate delivery settings that need to be defined -
Sampling Delivery, which applies to all sampling variants, and
Main Delivery, which applies only to the main variant. Therefore, for an A/B-split job, the delivery settings are included on the Sampling Variant Jobs or Main Variant Job tabs
on the A/B-Split Job Details screen.
Important: The authorization of the sampling variants and the main variant happen after each other. The sampling variants have to be authorized first, which like for a normal A/B-split job is only possible if all sampling variants are complete (with green checkmarks). Once the variant delivery is authorized, all sampling variant jobs will be delivered according to the
Sampling Delivery settings. Authorization of the main variant is only possible after the delivery of all sampling variants has been completed (either successfully or with failure). Also the main variant job must be completed first (with green checkmarks). Once authorized, it will be delivered according to the
Main Delivery settings. For information on authorizing the delivery, see Section 9.5
Authorizing the Delivery of an A/B-Split Job with Sampling.
To schedule the delivery of the Sampling Variant Jobs, click on the
Edit link in the
Sampling Delivery section on the Sampling Variants Jobs tab. The A/B-Split Job Delivery Settings screen opens.
From this screen, you can schedule the delivery of the sampling variant jobs to take place immediately after authorization or at a future date and time relative to a selected time zone.
To schedule the delivery of the Main Variant Job, click on the
Edit link in the
Main Delivery section on the Main Variant Jobs tab. The A/B-Split Job Delivery Settings screen opens.
From this screen, you can schedule the delivery of the main variant job to take place immediately after authorization or at a future date and time relative to a selected time zone.
Auto-repeat jobs are made up of a sequence of identical jobs based on the first job created in the series and scheduled to be delivered at regular programmable intervals. Various settings control the auto-repeat sequence, and these sequences can be used in many ways.
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If Deliver immediately when authorized is specified and a repeat interval of 12 hours is used for the first job, and that job is authorized at 9:15h, then the initial job would be delivered at 9:15h, the first copy would be delivered at 21:15h, the second copy at 9:15h of the next day, and so on.
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If Deliver at 12:00h is specified and a repeat interval of 24 hours is used (or for the same effect 1 day), then one delivery each day, at 12:00h, would occur.
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If Deliver at 10:20h on 11/24/2004 is specified (which happens to be a Wednesday) and a repeat interval of 2 weeks is used, then this would cause a copy of the job to be delivered at 10:20h of the Wednesday of every second week after the initial delivery.
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If Deliver at 12:00h on 1/1/2005 is specified and a repeat interval of 3 months is used, a delivery on the first of each of the months of January, April, July and October would occur, resulting in one mailing at the beginning of each quarter.
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Auto-Repeat delivery is particularly useful together with dynamic recipient lists and/or dynamic content. Dynamic recipient lists are the “just-in-time” variants of recipients defined by a target group, text upload, a select from a database, as well as standard LISTSERV lists or recipients selected from a database by LISTSERV. What all these recipient types have in common is that the actual list of recipients a job will be mailed to is determined "just-in-time" at the moment prior to delivery. If such a job auto-repeats itself, each repeated copy may be mailed to a different list of recipients.
Dynamic content is content that uses drop-ins to pull content into the message "just-in-time" before delivery. Different content can be used with auto-repeat jobs to mail constantly changing content to a list of recipients without editing the other parts of a job. Examples of these types of jobs are provided below:
A bank or credit union could employ dynamic recipient lists for sending a generic "Your account balance is negative" warning message on the first of each month to only those recipients who have a negative account balance on that day.
To set up such an auto-repeat job, create a job with static content telling the recipients that their account balance is negative (possibly using the balance value as a merge field pulled from the customer database). Use a recipient definition that is "just-in-time" and that selects exactly those recipients from the database where the account balance is negative. Next, schedule this job to be delivered at a certain hour of the first day of the next month, with a repeat interval of one month. After the initial authorization of that first job, the mail would automatically go out at the set hour of the first of each month, to only the recipients with a negative account balance.
A weather report service could employ dynamic content to automatically mail the daily weather forecast to all subscribers on their list. To set up this type of auto-repeat job, create a job with content that uses a drop-in that pulls the text of the daily forecast from a suitable source (for example from a web server). Next, schedule this job to be delivered at a certain hour of the next day, with a repeat interval of one day. Before setting the hour of delivery, check to make sure that the source of the weather forecast drop-in is updated before the hour of the delivery time. After the initial authorization of that first job, the mail would automatically go out at the scheduled hour each day, with a different forecast (as pulled from the web server source by the drop-in) each day.
If delivery of an auto-repeat job fails for any reason, the failure is handled differently than with normal jobs. A failed auto-repeat job is marked failed as usual, only it is automatically closed and transferred into the list of delivered jobs, just as if it had been manually closed as a failed normal job. If the end-condition for the auto-repeat has not yet been met, a new copy is created and authorized for delivery after the corresponding delay interval, just as if the delivery of the previous job had not failed. See Section 11.2
Auto-Repeat Jobs and Delivery Failures for more information on delivery failures.
Important: "No recipients found" is a valid reason for a delivery failure. However, in the context of auto-repeat jobs, this may actually be an acceptable state if there are no recipients that fit the conditions of the job. In the
Dynamic Recipients Example, a message was supposed to be delivered to all recipients with a negative account balance on the first of each month. If in a given month there are no recipients with a negative account balance, no mail would be sent out for that month, and the job instance for that month would fail with "No recipients found" as the reason for failure. In this case, the failure should be interpreted as a valid state because there simply were no recipients to deliver mail to on that day. The auto-repeat sequence would continue with another copy for the next month, so if any recipients have a negative balance on the first of the next month, they would then get the reminder mail.
Auto-repeat jobs are treated differently than normal jobs during a system shutdown. For a normal job, if the system is down at the scheduled delivery time, the job will be delivered immediately when the system is started the next time. The system will recognize that the delivery time of the job has passed while the system was down and will immediately start the delivery to "make up" for the lost time.
If the system is down at the scheduled delivery time of an auto-repeat job, the system will recognize that the delivery time of the job has passed while the system was down. Instead of starting delivery immediately, the job will be re-scheduled to the next available "delivery slot" of the auto-repeat sequence it belongs to. The job will remain in the Ongoing Jobs list as "authorized for delivery", but now with a new delivery time that occurs after the system startup. If there is no such delivery slot available because the end-condition for the auto-repeat has already been met, (the threshold time has passed) the job will be marked as failed with a corresponding error message and will immediately be transferred to the list of delivered jobs (as explained in Section 11.2
Auto-Repeat Jobs and Delivery Failures).
If a job is scheduled to be delivered at 8:00, with an auto-repeat delay interval of 12 hours (the job is supposed to repeat itself at 8:00 and 20:00 of each day), but the system is down at that time, then during the next system startup, the job will be re-scheduled from 8:00 to 20:00. Or if the next system startup occurs after 20:00 of that day, the job will be re-scheduled to 8:00 of the next day, or even 20:00 of the next day, if necessary, and so on until a delivery time is found that occurs after the system startup. During the whole process, the job will not fail and no new job copies are created. The system simply takes the job that should have been delivered earlier and re-schedules it for the next available delivery time. If the job was supposed to stop auto-repeating at a time that has passed before the system startup, then the system will not find a "next available delivery time" for re-scheduling. In that case, the job will fail with a message to that effect.
