[pmwiki-users] ZAPmail enhancements...

[The Editor]

I've just added some very interesting enhancements to ZAP's mail
functions I hope to be releasing later today. Just want to do a bit
more testing first...

Here's the details in case anyone has any input on this before it is
released, and also a request for some input:

1) The email command can now be set to a CSV list of email addresses
and/or member names. If a member name it will automatically check the
profile page and retrieve the email, and even decode it if encoded.

This kind of makes the email_members command unnecessary--though I
could set it so email only takes email addresses, and email_members
only takes member names.  Any thoughts?

2) email_news can be set to a page containing a list of email
addresses (one to a line) and the email addresses will all be
retrieved. Because of the way it now works, member names can also be
included in the list and they will be translated into their
corresponding emails.

3) a new email_group can be used to retrieve a list of email names
from a membership list (for a ZAP AuthUser user group), and all the
names will be automatically translated into emails. This is designed
to integrate seemlessly with ZAP's new group mgmt capabilities.

Actually, thinking about it a bit now, as both email_news and
email_group both run the same routine, I could just combine them as
one function, and call it email_list and just require a full page name
to function. Or I could do

email='{(source NewsList.ChessClub)}'

and I would not need any other kinds of commands. Just one email command.

Of course, if I did add email_list as a separate command, I could
perhaps even allow one to retrieve emails from multiple pages and
compile the results into one master list! (Duplicates deleted of
course!).  Any thoughts?

4) The system is also reworked so that when a member name is used
instead of an email, data from their profile page can be merged into
the message, giving each email a custom look. A special provision is
also made to allow passwords to be automatically decoded as needed and
sent by email. This makes password reminders a breeze. Yet also secure
as they can only be sent to the matching email address.

5) The email scheduling system (start time, throttle, batch size, etc)
was revamped to use the same sending approach, meaning you can
pre-schedule emails to lists of members and have the output merged
with their current profile's info at the time the messages are sent.

Feedback welcome!

Cheers,
Dan