April 7, 2003
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Message Forwarding
Users can now have their reply/return mail and tracking receipts forwarded to
ePriority POP3 mailboxes and/or user-specified email addresses. This gives users
two new options for collecting and organizing their reply/return mail and tracking
receipts for mail sent through ePriority. Users now have a way to save and view
these messages for their own purposes.
This feature can be activated from the Profile Management section of the ePriority
website. Users need only to check a checkbox, for each type of return message they
want on the profile create/edit form, to have their return messages sent to an
ePriority POP3 mailbox. Users can also supply an email address for each type of
return message.
In addition to reply/return mail and tracking receipts, users may now take advantage
of From Tracking. From Tracking tracks the number of replies to a From: address.
From Tracking is the same as Reply Tracking, except that the From address is
being replaced with a tracking address in the From: field included in the SMTP
header, rather than the Reply-To: field.
Bounce Tracking, Reply Tracking, From Tracking, and Return Receipt Tracking can
all be set up to utilize ePriority POP3 mailboxes or user-specified email
addresses. This gives users more control over their ePriority tracking features
than ever before.
Inline Images
Inline Images allow clients to construct a message in which the body is HTML
with an "embedded" image. The image file is sent as part of the
message rather than from a remote location. In other words, the HTML message can
be self-contained or stand alone and include all the pieces (i.e., images)
needed for display. One of the advantages of this is that once the message has
arrived into a users inbox, the user does not need network access to display the
message complete with all images.
To specify a message utilizing Inline Images, a user simply needs to define an
HTML message with some images. Each image in the message only needs to have its
display key set to "inline". For people using the ePriority online
Batch Mailer utility, this is done by specifying the content type of an uploaded
image to "Inline", rather than "Body" or "Attachment".
Failed Address List
A failed address list will be generated for any batch that has at least one
message that bounced or had a delivery failure. This is extremely useful for
determining which target recipients of the mailing need to be re-contacted. This
list can be downloaded from the Batch Summary Report page on the ePriority website.
This list is a CSV (comma-separated-value) file containing the email
address, failed status code, date and time, client package Id, ePriority
package Id, client batch Id, and the ePriority batch Id. The first row of the
CSV file will always contain field names for the rows of data that follow.
Opt-out Address List
An opt-out address list is a single listing of user opt-out responses per client
account. An opt-out response can be generated for any batch that utilizes the
Out-Out ePriority feature tag and which has at
least one response to the opt-out link in the message. This is useful for
determining which target recipients of the mailing have opted-out. This list
can be downloaded from the Reporting home page on the ePriority website.
This list will be a CSV (comma-separated-value) file containing the date and time,
email address, BID (ePriority batch Id), and the CBID (client batch Id). The
first row of the CSV file will always contain field names for the rows of data
that follow. All of this information is provided as to assist users in locating
the opt-outs for their batch.
Batch Re-submission
Users now have the ability to re-submit failed batches using the same CBID.
Note - as of ePriority Release 9, CBID must be unique per client account.
This is useful for users that treat CBID as a primary value for their back end
systems. For example, if a use has created a batch with CBID = YearEnd2003 for
year end statement mailings and something happened to corrupt the batch during
while building the batch or uploading, the batch would fail and no packages
would go out. Now since the CBID YearEnd2003 is the back end primary value for
the year end 2003 statements, another batch with the same name of YearEnd2003
can be submitted again so that back end systems are correct.
For a batch to qualify for re-submission, it must not have had any packages
sent out and it must be named with the same CBID. The batch can then be
submitted the same way as it was the first time. Failed batches will still be
listed on the Reports pages of the ePriority website.
Batch Status Service
The Batch Status Service is the new standard for checking the processing results
of a batch. Users can use this service to retrieve current, up to date information
about batch processing. Information returned includes BID (ePriority
generated unique batch Id), submission date/time, current batch processing
stage, date/time of the current processing stage, and the batch archive path.
The batch archive path is where all archived information about a batch is
stored. This information includes outbound email, inbound batch file, all
tracking files, and all logs. This data will exist for the duration of the
retention dates defined in the delivery profile associated with this batch.
To use the Batch Status Service, the user only needs a BID or a CBID and
CID (client Id). They can use this information to query the Batch Status Service
on the ePriority website. For example, if a user (with client Id = 1501) wanted
to find out about the batch where CBID = YearEnd2003, then they would type in
the following URL into a browser:
http://epriority.com/BatchStatus?cbid=YearEnd2003&cid=1501
Likewise, a user could use a BID instead of the CBID + CID entering in the
following query:
http://epriority.com/BatchStatus?bid=2001042155
For more information please see the
Batch Status Service Guide.
Web Hosting
Now ePriority offers a limited Web hosting service. In cases where users want to
link to, or reference external images or documents in their mailings but choose
not to host those images or documents themselves, ePriority now has the ability to
serve them for you. Instead of uploading that company logo or that privacy policy
document with each batch as it it done using Inline Images,
users can now upload those files, via FTP, once and then reference them in each
mailing. The advantage of this is that users get the dependability and stability
of the ePriority web host for storing and accessing their hosted files. Note
that this service is not intended for site hosting; it is intended to help
reduce the message size of graphics-intensive mailings and mailings which would
otherwise contain large attachments.
To utilize Web Hosting, users can upload the files they want served via FTP into
their "webdocs" directory (see
FTP Directories).
All files in that directory are accessible from the Web through the URL:
/client/<CID (client ID)>/<filename>.
In addition, if a user has defined a custom tracking domain for the HTTP protocol
they can use it instead of the standard ePriority domain. For example, if a
user with CID = 1501 has configured web.ff.com as an HTTP
Custom Domain, then they could refer to the
company logo as
http://web.ff.com/client/1501/logo.gif.
Batch Control
Batch Control is a new feature that allows users to halt, resume, and/or abort a
submitted batch. This can be useful when shortly after submitting a batch a
mistake is found in the mailing. A user can then halt the batch until the problem
can be evaluated further for severity. If the problem is severe enough then the
batch can be aborted and no further processing will occur, otherwise the batch
can be resumed to continue processing. It is important to note that since one of
the main features of the ePriority mail service is the fast speed in which it
processes batches and sends out mail, the Batch Control feature will need acted
on quickly when a problem is suspected. Users wanting to take full advantage of
this feature might want to also specify a delay (in the delivery profile) for
their batches so that there is enough time to halt a problematic batch.
The Batch Control features can be found on the Batch Summary Report of reporting
on the ePriority website. Appropriate batch control functions will only be listed
for batches that can have those functions applied to them. If none of these
functions are listed then the batch cannot have any batch control functions
applied to it.
Custom Domains
Users can now hide the use of the ePriority mail service in mail headers and
tracking links. This feature allows a user to direct their tracking messages to
a domain that they own but are in fact redirected to the ePriority tracking
domain. The final effect is purely cosmetic as recipients see only the user's
domains in any links or addresses generated by ePriority and any/all tracking is
performed as normal. There are two Custom Domains that users can define, one for
SMTP and one for HTTP. The SMTP domains will be used in the mail message headers
and the HTTP domains will be used in any tracking links.
Users can utilize Custom Domains by defining a delivery profile that they use
for their batches. On the profile create/edit page there is an option to specify
a custom SMTP domain and a custom HTTP domain. Any new batch can then use that
delivery profile and have full use of these Custom Domains.
XML Batch Submission
With this release, users can now harness the power of Extensible Markup
Language (XML) to build a batch for submission via the new XML Batch Service.
Previously, users had to construct their batches using the standard
TAR Batch Service
or the online Batch Mailer tool. This new service allows users to construct
their batches using standard XML technology.
To use this service, users can build an XML batch as described in the
Batch Service Guide,
and then FTP it to the /batches directory in the users specified client area.
ePriority Tags
Many of ePriority's content-oriented features are implemented with feature tags.
These are proprietary tags that can be inserted throughout a batches content that
simplify the syntax and allow generation or substitution of values within the
content. These feature tags allow advanced functionality that would otherwise
need to be implemented on a message by message basis as opposed to a single
piece of content that will be customized for each recipient. Currently, there
are five different ePriority feature tags. Users are encouraged to review the
documentation on these tags in the Service Overview Guide via the links provided
below.
To implement the ePriority feature tags, users only need to create a piece of
content for a batch inserting the desired tags in appropriate spots. Some tags
such as the PData tag require additional information, so make sure that all the
requirements are met prior to using the tags.
Software Fixes
Several software fixes are also included in this release. Below is a short
description of each.
- Batch Mailer: fixed problem with content file names that were longer 16
characters in length.
- Batch Mailer: Allow content parts with spaces in the file name.
- Batch Summary Report: fixed problems with links to files.
- Batch Summary Report: fixed package counts.
- Batch Processor: no longer rejects batches with bad addresses.
- Batch Processor: no longer rejects batches that include long filenames
(over 16 characters).
- Batch Processor: fixed nulls in address map file.
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