launch outlook with coldfusion PLEASE HELP

[wolf_lady]

Hi I need help; people here have been asking for this for a long time and I
don't know what to do. We are running trial vers. of MX but I am trying to do
this on the server that runs CF5. The purchase of MX might depend on this.

Basically, we have a large client database. The clients are in groups. The
staff here wants the ability in the coldfusion interface we built for them, to
choose a group of people from the database and automatically populate an ms
outlook message with their email addresses in the To: field. They do not want
this functionality to run on the server (cfmail) as they want everything
tracked in outlook.

I tried to mailto:<cfloop> around the email addresses. This seemed to only
work with small groups. Large groups it just hangs. Anyways, I need a
methodology to deal with this request, and I need it as soon as you can reply :(

I appreciate any help!!

~Wolfie

[jdeline]

I believe you're limited to the length of the MAILTO: address list (don't know
what that limit is, tho). You might be able to do something like the following.

Create groups in Outlook's address book that mirror the groups you want to
send e-mail to.
Add a field in your database to indicate what group a person is in.
Use a MAILTO: tag to permit a user to selecct a group, rather than specific
people.

This approach keeps your MAILTO: list length short.

Of course, if groups change frequently, this can become a maintenance headache.

[wolf_lady]

Yes, unfortunately there are thousands of clients, the group memberships change daily, and that is exactly the kind of redundant effort we are trying to get rid of. Appreciate the response anyways :)

[jdeline]

I believe you're limited to the length of the MAILTO: address list (don't know
what that limit is, tho). You might be able to do something like the following.

- Create groups in Outlook's address book that mirror the groups you want to
send e-mail to.
- Add a field in your database to indicate what group a person is in.
- Use a MAILTO: tag to permit a user to selecct a group, rather than specific
people.

This approach keeps your MAILTO: list length short.

Of course, if groups change frequently, this can become a maintenance headache.

[MattRobertson]

Typically server side apps can not engage anything on the client side for
security reasons. As such your options are extremely limited in what it is you
can feed to the client side and I think you've already hit the wall on that
score, so to speak. About the only thing you can do is create a series of
links on a page (being mindful of the to: limit as set in RFC 2821 (I forget
what it is now). Where you loop over a query of email addresses,
listappend()ing as you go along until you max out the to: field, and then
output the link and work on creating another.

ugh! You gotta be desperate to do that!

And I think that wall you hit is a lot thicker than you think. Lets say you
do the above. If you try to send out mail with zillions of addresses in the
to: field you'll look like a spammer to a lot of mail services, who suddenly
see a boatload of mail coming from you, will kick in their frequency filters
and torpedo your mail. I described the problem in
[url]http://mysecretbase.com/slowing_down_cfmail.cfm[/url] and its only gotten worse since
then.

I'm thinking your job requirement needs to change, like it or not. CF can do
this on its own quite well.

Sorry for the downer,

--Matt--
MSB Web Systems... [url]http://mysecretbase.com[/url]
I We humans are full of unpredictable emotions that logic cannot solve.
- Kirk, "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" stardate 2712.4.

[wolf_lady]

Thanks Matt; no bummer here; the biggest client group we send out to is 200 and
they are paid members and want our emails! believe it or not. It seems to hang
though when I loop on a group of folks over say 55; I'm not sure where the
cutoff is. So when you say list append.. I guess I don't know how to do that.
Do you mean open up more than one email message when it goes over the cutoff
size? There 's an idea and yes I am desperate.

Thanks a bunch