Mass Emails

Purpose of this document

This document illustrates the step-by-step process of using the Ceres Mass Email functionality to send emails to the following entities:

• Parent Agencies
• Agencies
• Shoppers
• Vendors
• Donors
• Contacts

Ceres Object release 6.00.00 is required for the functionality described in this document.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Overview
• Setting up Mass Email functionality
  • SMTP Setup for Mass Email
  • Email Address Setup
• Sending Mass Emails

Overview

In Ceres, the user can send out mass emails to ALL or filtered groups of:

• Parent Agencies
• Agencies
• Shoppers
• Vendors
• Donors
• Contacts

The user can type one subject, email body and attach documents to be sent with the email. Mass email is very useful if you want to send out information to a large group of constituents at once, for example announcing an unexpected closure or providing information to a selected Order Group.

The same email “body” and attachments are sent to ALL selected entities with an email address in the system. It does not function like a mail merge.

Agency and Donor Document Email Functionality and Agency Express 3 (AE3) email notifications for Shoppers are also available for generating certain types of emails with Document Attachments for Agencies and Shoppers.

Setting up Mass Email functionality

In addition to the SMTP mail setup defined here, you may need to work with your Exchange Administrator to allow emails to large numbers of recipients to be processed. Otherwise, it may be flagged as junk mail or quarantined by the server. In addition, if you manage your own Ceres server and Exchange Server, you may need to install and register a mail handling DLL to allow emails to bypass the local Outlook client. The AE3 Shopper email and Donor/ Agency Email referenced above have similar setup requirements. If you are hosted, talk to the Service Desk about this setup.

SMTP Setup for Mass Email

1. To be able to send mass emails from within Ceres to your email system, you must set up the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol).

Note: This is similar, but different than the email protocol set up for sending automatic email messages to Shoppers for Agency Express. 

2. The SMTP Mail Setup can be accessed by selecting “Search” from the Dynamics 365 Business Central Banner and entering “Email Accounts” in “Tell me what you want to do” then selecting “Email Accounts” from the results in the Go to Pages and Tasks section OR by selecting the “Email Accounts” menu action (if present) from your Role Center home page.

3. Specify the STMP Server settings applicable for your food bank as well as the Authentication preference, and an Administrator User ID and Password if required. Typically, your IT person or department will handle this setup. If you are a FA Hosted site, you can log a Service Desk ticket for this assistance.

Email Address Setup

The Mass email routine will send to all selected Parent Agencies, Agencies and Shoppers that have a valid email address in the following fields:

Parent Agency

Field titled “E-mail” on the Address & Contact Tab, which typically matches the Contact Name from the General Tab.

Agency

Field titled “E-mail” on the Address & Contact Tab, which typically matches the Contact Name from the General Tab.

                Note: This routine does not send to the Invoice Email or Statement Email.

Shopper

Field titled “E-mail Address” on the Shopper record.

Donor

Field titled “E-mail” on the Address & Contact Tab, which typically matches the Contact Name from the General Tab.

                Note: This routine does not send to the Receipt Delivery Email.

Vendor

Field titled “E-mail” on the Address & Contact Tab, which typically matches the Contact Name from the General Tab.

Contact

Field titled “E-mail” on the Communication Tab, which typically matches the Contact Name from the General Tab.

If any of these fields contain values other than an email address, the Mass email function may fail. Validate your email information before using this for the first time.

Sending Mass Emails

When you send the emails out, an Agencies email provider may trap it in Junk/ Spam. You should send a sample email out and ask the Agencies to mark your source address as a trusted sender in their email client.

1. The Mass Email functionality batch routine can be accessed by selecting “Search” from the Dynamics 365 Business Central Banner and entering “Send Mass E-mail” in “Tell me what you want to do” then selecting “Send Mass E-mail” from the results in the Go to Pages and Tasks section OR by selecting the “Send Mass E-mail” menu action (if present) from your Role Center home page.

2. You can select which Contact Type(s) you want to Email by selecting Parent Agency, Agency, Shopper, Vendor, Donor or Contact. Multiple choices can be selected. Ceres will use the email address that is stored on the records detailed above.
3. The From Address is the Reply-to address that will show in the email.
4. Additional To Addresses: You can manually enter additional email addresses you want to send this email to. Multiple addresses should be separated by a semicolon.
5. Subject: Enter the email subject. This can be left blank, but that is not recommended, or your message may be trapped on the server as a risk.
6. Body: Enter the body of the email you want to send.

Note: The exact same message is sent to all selected entities (all Shoppers with emails for example).

7. Attachment File Path: If you want to include an attachment, browse to the location of the file. The file path will display.
8. If you toggled one or more Contact Types in step 2, only those with a valid email address defined will be included, but there can be times where you only want to send an email to a subset of selected entities. This further winnowing of the email list can be accomplished by setting additional filters.

In our example, we will select a subset of Parent Agency Contacts. To do so, expand the Parent Agency FastTab at the bottom.

In the above example, only Parent Agency Contacts with an email address on the Parent Agency Card in the number range of 1002 to 1014 will receive the email. You can further refine the recipients of the email by adding additional filters as needed. The fields shown on the Parent Agency, Agency, Shopper, Donor, Vendor and Contact Cards are available for filtering. Any fields that must be accessed via Navigate functions are not available for filtering the email groups.

9. You can set the same filter options for both Agency and Shopper by expanding those FastTabs.
10. Once the email is complete and ready to send, click OK.
11. A status message will pop up when the emails have been sent to the server.