Duplicate emails...sort of

[Jennie Lovell]

Hi, everyone.

When I send out a schedule via the Emailer, it sends each person's schedule individually. That is okay until I have multiple people from one family sharing an email address. I have one family of 10 that receives 6 or 7 copies of each email. I don't email things out terribly often, but receiving so many of the same email has been causing some people to delete the seeming duplicates with resulting no shows for their scheduled service times. To try to avoid that, I've put the minister's first name (via a token) in the subject line. 

Does anyone have an idea of any other way I might limit the number of "duplicate" emails?

Thanks,
Jennie

[Julie Krause]

I agree.  It would be nice if MSP could combine families schedules that have the same email address as it can get confusing and at times they just delete the email thinking it is a duplicate but in reality it pertains to a specific member and they may miss an important notification. 

 

 

Julie A. Krause

Julie A. Krause

Director of Parish Operations

Sacred Heart Catholic Church

5501 Monticello Rd.

Shawnee, KS 66226

913.422.5700 ext 205

913.422.5723 (fax)

---

[Deluca, Dorothy]

I agree as well, but it mght be somewhat complicated to implement. Rather than forming an email distribution by minister, it would be by email.  So how do you display who gets the email? Would you list the ministers, or the email addresses?  This would mean expanding the tokens in a different way, for example scheduled services would not be expanded by one minister, but instead by a group of ministers.  I set up custom tokens in  email so that an entire email distribution gets some generic information, but then EMs would get information that just pertained to them, same for lectors and so on.  It would mean the mailer would need to verify valid ministries for a set of ministers, not just the one.   These are just a couple of complications.  I think it would be wonderful to have, but perhaps time consuming to code, lots of things to consider.  We should all say a prayer for the development team at MSP J.

 

Dorothy

Mary, Mother of God

Hillsborough, NJ

[Jennie Lovell]

Oh, I don't necessarily mean to ask MSP developers to change the way the emailer works. Most of the time, I like it just the way it is. I'm just looking for ideas of alternative ways to get the information to people without duplicating the emails. For example, perhaps we, as MSP admins, could form an email distribution by email address rather than minister. Has anyone successfully tried a generic email sent to just the different emails, pointing people only to the Web Terminal or such for individualized information? Is that even something that can be done without duplicates?

There might be creative ways to use what MSP already has in place to accomplish my desired result. I just wondered if anyone has any ideas of how it might be done. :)

Thanks!

Jennie

[MSP Support]

Hello all,

Thank you for the feedback!  We will take the request into consideration for the future of MSP.  As Dorothy mentioned, it does get complicated, but the programmers will work on it the best they can.

In the meantime, something that might help communicate to a family that the 5 emails they get are different, is the ability to insert a token into the Subject line.  This way you can insert the full or first name token, and make it easy to glance in the inbox and distinguish the various emails.

To do this simply insert the token you wish to use into the body of your email.  Highlight the entire token and use Ctrl-C to copy.  Place your cursor in the subject line and use Ctrl-V to paste.

Best,
Mikki
MSP Tech Support

[Pmt...@aol.com]

Hi!  I have the same problem, but in a minor way in that no more than two ministers -- usually husband and wife -- share an email.  Rarely, I've received requests to just send one email to the shared address.  Usually, the two minister sharing the email address are setup within a family so that they share serving preferences, can't serve times, address, etc -- including email address. I've thought about removing the linked email address and deleting the email from one of the family members, but that causes me other issues (for one thing, it would distort my metric on the number of ministers that have email addresses).

 

So, I simply explain that that's the way it is and continue to send duplicates.

 

Roy Hardinge

Saint Margaret Mary Church

Lomita, CA

 

---

[Deluca, Dorothy]

One option is to put in some keywords in the comments field (unfortunately this might be confusing to your ministers if they have the option to view and update this field).  You could put in informative keywords like:  “Do Not Send Duplicate Emails Within Family” in the comments section of all but one of the family members.  Having it be informative will let the minister understand the purpose.  Then in your email filter for “Moreover, only send to ministers passing this filter…” you can select Comments, contain the following “Do Not Send Duplicate Emails Within Family” and then select “Filter by the inverse of these criteria”.  This will not send to any ministers that have the keywords.  This will not work well if you are trying to send out Scheduled Services tokens or login password information, or any information that varies by minister, but if it is a generic email this would work for you.

 

I use keywords like this all the time, and since I never send paper email I use the address field for this purpose instead of comments.  You can search that field in the filter as well.  Then I just do not allow my ministers to see or update that field.

 

Thanks,

Dorothy

[rjd...@gmail.com]

Take this one step further and allow a family login so all the family schedule can be seen with one login.

 

Bob Daniels

 

From: using-ministry...@googlegroups.com [mailto:using-ministry...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Julie Krause
Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 8:48 AM
To: using-ministry...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [Using MSP] Re: Duplicate emails...sort of

 

I agree.  It would be nice if MSP could combine families schedules that have the same email address as it can get confusing and at times they just delete the email thinking it is a duplicate but in reality it pertains to a specific member and they may miss an important notification. 

[Don Bernhard]

Oh, that's an easy one. The way I do this is to put in the comment
section the phrase "no reminder email." (Of course, you can use
whatever unique phrase you want.) When I send weekly email reminders I
check the "Moreover..." with the filter "inverse of these criteria" for
"Comments contain no reminder email." (This is all saved in a setting,
which I can recall easily.) Benefit is that I still have their email to
use for other mailings, but I don't bother them with weekly reminders,
if they don't want one.

This is essentially a workaround to set a "flag." If I had my wish MSP
would include a handful of user* definable flags that can be defined and
selected for such filtering. Until then (if ever) I'll make my own
"flags" in the comment section. :-) Good thing I don't use the comment
section for much else.

* by "user" I mean administrator, not minister.

--
Don Bernhard - d...@sfasat.org
Director of Music Ministries
St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church - music.sfasat.org
San Antonio, Texas

Pmt...@aol.com wrote:
> Hi! I have the same problem, but in a minor way in that no more than
> two ministers -- usually husband and wife -- share an email. Rarely,
> I've received requests to just send one email to the shared
> address. Usually, the two minister sharing the email address are setup
> within a family so that they share serving preferences, can't serve
> times, address, etc -- including email address. I've thought about
> removing the linked email address and deleting the email from one of the
> family members, but that causes me other issues (for one thing, it would
> distort my metric on the number of ministers that have email addresses).
>
> So, I simply explain that that's the way it is and continue to send
> duplicates.
>
> Roy Hardinge
> Saint Margaret Mary Church
> Lomita, CA
>

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Our Lady of the Woods Church]

Hi

Making sure the full information is on the email as a token …. Full name and ministry …. Should work.

 

Always at your service,
Vicki
Vicki M. Rector ________________________________________________
Teller County Catholic Community
Our Lady of the Woods Church - Woodland Park
St. Peter's - Cripple Creek, St. Victor's - Victor, Faith Community in Florissant
116 S. West St., P O Box 5590, Woodland Park, CO 80866-5590
719-687-9345 phone
719-687-0893 fax
mailto:OurladyW...@aol.com
Website is www.OurLadyWoods.com
Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

[Our Lady of the Woods Church]

Another idea would to be able to put tokens in the subject line that has the receiver’s name in it…?

 

Always at your service,
Vicki
Vicki M. Rector ________________________________________________
Teller County Catholic Community
Our Lady of the Woods Church - Woodland Park
St. Peter's - Cripple Creek, St. Victor's - Victor, Faith Community in Florissant
116 S. West St., P O Box 5590, Woodland Park, CO 80866-5590
719-687-9345 phone
719-687-0893 fax
mailto:OurladyW...@aol.com
Website is www.OurLadyWoods.com
Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

 

From: using-ministry...@googlegroups.com [mailto:using-ministry...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jennie Lovell
Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 7:19 PM
To: MSP Users Group
Subject: [Using MSP] Duplicate emails...sort of

 

Hi, everyone.

[Our Lady of the Woods Church]

I’m going to try this one!

To do this simply insert the token you wish to use into the body of your email.  Highlight the entire token and use Ctrl-C to copy.  Place your cursor in the subject line and use Ctrl-V to paste.

 

Always at your service,

Vicki
Vicki M. Rector ________________________________________________
Teller County Catholic Community
Our Lady of the Woods Church - Woodland Park
St. Peter's - Cripple Creek, St. Victor's - Victor, Faith Community in Florissant
116 S. West St., P O Box 5590, Woodland Park, CO 80866-5590
719-687-9345 phone
719-687-0893 fax
mailto:OurladyW...@aol.com
Website is www.OurLadyWoods.com
Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

[Mary Kloos]

Re: Dorothy’s last sentence.  AMEN!  They do a great job!

 

Mary

Forest Lake, MN