automatically send reminder email

[cdub]

I'm very surprised that I can?t find anything on this subject in these forums.
Usually I can find the answers to any questions I have here.

Anyway I?m looking for a way to automatically send a reminder email at a later
date. For example: If someone makes an appointment online, I want them to
automatically be sent a reminder email the day before. Or, they sign up for a
program and then automatically get an update sent 15 days later. I?m sure this
is possible but I have no idea how to it.

Does anyone know of an extension, component or ever pure ASP code that will
accomplish this? Thanks!

[CarlGrint]

The problem is without a exe programme you have to reply on server side code,
which needs a trigger, so it can not just run when a Date arrives, it needs you
to say view a page, then it will be able to check if that Date has occured then
run your script.
With shared hosting it is difficult if not impossible to use exe programmes,
as your host will not like it.

You could investigate a trigger in say SQL server, but again you are limited
to what your host will let you do.

Originally posted by: cdub
I'm very surprised that I can?t find anything on this subject in these forums.
Usually I can find the answers to any questions I have here.

Anyway I?m looking for a way to automatically send a reminder email at a later
date. For example: If someone makes an appointment online, I want them to
automatically be sent a reminder email the day before. Or, they sign up for a
program and then automatically get an update sent 15 days later. I?m sure this
is possible but I have no idea how to it.

Does anyone know of an extension, component or ever pure ASP code that will
accomplish this? Thanks!

[Bren]

Hi cdub

I have looked into a similar scenario to yours and the only viable solution
I could do was to write a batch file on an internal company server that has
permanant access to the internet.
This batch file is scheduled daily to open up Internet explorer and navigate
to the URL of an .asp page I wrote that executes and sends emails to
subscribers that meet the required parameters for that day.
In this day and age where ADSL is widely used and permanet internet access
is the nom then this isn't a bad way of dealing with ASP page automation. If
you are one of the unlucky people that still don't have ADSL then you could
still schedule a dialup and execute your batch file as above but I do know
from experience this can be a little unreliable.

Hope this gives you something to work on.

Regards
Bren